Composer street names update

In 2009, I wrote about the lack of a Mendelssohn Strasse in Freiburg, despite Freiburg being a progressive city, despite WWII having ended 64 years prior, despite the obvious anti-Semitism in the choice of composer street names. The surprise wasn't so much in the omission than in its lack of post-war correction. Indeed, in 2009, concert programs all over Germany were celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn's birth; you'd think Freiburg would have done something about the absent street name.

Now it's 2022, and time for a two-part update.

Part One

On my way out of town for a long hike two days ago, I passed through the composers-street-names neighborhood, and glanced up in time to notice I was passing Richard-Wagner-Strasse. Many of Freiburg's street signs have supplementary signs with information about the individuals the streets are named for, but I didn't remember Richard-Wagner-Strasse having an explanatory sign in 2009. The interwebs tell me it was added in 2017.

The supplemental sign states:

Die Straßenbenennung erfolgte 1933 mit der Errichtung des Musikerviertels. Wagner ist als Komponist bis heute weltberühmt. In seinem Werk finden sich jedoch auch viele antisemitische Passagen.

The street was named in 1933 with the construction of the Musicians' Quarter. Wagner is world-famous as a composer to this day. In his work, however, many anti-Semitic passages are found. 

It took 84 years, but way to go, Freiburg. I think this is even better than renaming the street.

Part Two

But what of the lack of a Mendelssohn Strasse? The Musicians Quarter still lacks one, but the absence has been addressed in a beautiful way. 

When Freiburg's Hochschule fuer Musik (Music Academy) celebrated its 75th anniversary in November 2021--just eight months ago--the plaza in front of the academy was renamed Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Plaza. I made it part of my walking route today.

The sign reads:

Familie Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Fanny 1805-1847, Felix 1809-1847, Carl 1838-1897. Felix und seine Frau Cécile verbrachten 1837 während ihrer Hochzeitsreise mehrere Wochen in Freiburg. Ihr Sohn Carl war von 1868 - 1873 Professor der Universität Freiburg.

Family Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Fanny 1805-1847, Felix 1809-1847, Carl 1838-1897. Felix and his wife Cécile spent several weeks in Freiburg during their honeymoon in 1837. Their son Carl was a professor at the University of Freiburg 1868-1873.

The sign does not mention that Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy were composers who are world famous to this day, I guess because that would be stating the obvious on a sign with limited space. It took 97 years--or 88 years, depending on how you count (either from the city's 1924 creation of a list of composer names for streets, or from the actual naming of the streets in 1933)--to correct the omission.

Fürstenfeldbruck

We arrived in Steinebach on Monday afternoon (6/23) and commenced our ritual of hanging out and eating. We did build some local excursions into the mix, including a trip to Herrsching for big-town errands and gelato.

Three generations of post-gelato smiles

Back in Steinebach, the ginormous cat appointed S "Assistant Royal Tummy Scritcher"

We also took a trip to nearby Fürstenfeldbruck to go to our favorite kitchen gadgets store to gawk--but apparently the kitchen gadget store closed a few years ago. I guess we should have gone more often than once every five years. We did find a new kitchen gadget store that had bannetons (which we had forgotten we were looking for) and a special slicer for making Prinzregententorte (would that be cheating? We didn't get one, although we did try a piece of PRT at a bakery and decided it couldn't possibly be worth all the effort).

Fürstenfeldbruck city center appeared to be entirely under construction, with cranes and bulldozers and torn-up streets and sidewalks everywhere. With the old kitchen gadget store gone, the streets seemed unfamiliar. While crossing one street, we saw this memorial statue:

The plaque reads, "Hier führte in den letzten Kriegstagen im April 1945 der Leidensweg der KZ-Häftlinge aus den Todeslagern Kaufering/Landsberg vorbei ins Ungewisse" (Here, in the last days of the war in April 1945, the suffering path of the concentration camp prisoners from the death camps Kaufering/Landsberg passed into the unknown). The memorial, by Hubertus von Pilgrim, was erected in 1994 and is one of 22 copies commemorating towns along the KZ-Dachau death march; the first was erected in Gauting in 1989 (copies are also at the Dachau KZ museum and the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem). These close-to-home reminders are sobering, but a good thing. Even after coming to Germany regularly for the past 24 years, I still sometimes find it strange to see or meet folks of a certain age; the common thread is that no one knew yet everyone knew, no one participated yet everyone participated. And we say "Never again," but these sorts of things nonetheless continue around the world.

We saw the memorial in a relatively quick crossing of the street; the rest of our afternoon was spent at the FFB Kloster, which we had never visited before.

Organ info and up-close photos are here

Music notation on the ceiling! "Veni sponsa Christi."

Random happy dog

Roßkopf

The four windmills atop the Roßkopf, a mountain above the east side of Freiburg, are a convenient landmark. Visible from assorted freeways and Suedschwarzwald peaks, they help us orient ourselves in the direction of the city wherever we are.

This afternoon I headed northward into the hills. Three miles later, I unintentionally arrived at the windmills, having followed the simple prescription "immer aufwaerts" ("ever upward").

The windmills are very, very big. Really impressively big. The spinning blades cast gigantic shadows and make a quietly eerie humming sound.

A short distance away from the windmills is a diminutive 10-story high viewing tower that was erected by the Schwarzwald Verein in 1889. I didn't make it to the top to admire the curlicue wrought iron filigree, as the rickety wooden steps and the larger-than-usual "climb at your own risk" sign made me content to stop at the second floor.

On my hike down, I came across the St. Wendelin Kapelle, an isolated chapel basically in the middle of nowhere. The current stone chapel dates from 1895 and replaced a wooden chapel built in 1713. The original chapel was used as a shelter against storms and as a stopping off point for pilgrims travelling between Freiburg and St. Peter. St. Wendelin is very, very small. Really impressively small. If you had an interest in doing such things, you could probably pack a dozen or so St. Wendelin chapels into each windmill tower.

Clay class at the Fabrik

Knowing pretty much nothing about the layout of Freiburg before we committed to renting our apartment sight-unseen, we somehow managed to end up living within walking distance to most of the things that are important to us. Thus this evening I was able to trot over to the cooperative collective, Die Fabrik fuer Handwerk, Kultur, und Oekologie (The Factory for Handicraft, Culture, and Ecology), for the first of a five-week long session of pottery classes. As far as I can tell, the Fabrik is the only place in town to offer wheel-throwing classes, and they offer a grand total of...one. I'm taking "Drehen ohne durchzudrehen" ("Turning without blowing a gasket," i.e. beginning and continuing wheel) in the hopes of acquiring some pottery vocabulary and keeping my hands in contact with mud.

Located in the back of the Fabrik on the third floor, the cheerful Keramik Werkstatt (pottery studio) has all of the basic wheel-throwing necessities, such as mostly functioning wheels, relatively uncontaminated recycled clay, and a sink. For better or for worse, it also obeys the German pack-maximum-stuff-into-minimum-space principle.* All you potters at home: know that you've got it good!

*I've written a lot about this principle already, but have failed to point out that of course it applies only to us plebes. Royalty traditionally has had no shortage of square footage or high ceilings (not that the Habsburgs or Bavarian nobility would have had kick wheels in their Schloesser).

Balance

Now that Sommerferien is over, we are at last finding a balance in our lives between school, work, practice, and play.

This morning I practiced at the Lutheran church. The Braunschweig is kind of like a pre-adolescent golden retriever: its bark is relatively small and its feet a little oversized, but it's enthusiastic and eager to please, so you forgive it when its wagging tail whaps you. At precisely 11:30, the next organist came up to the loft, and I went my merry way back home, the falling leaves and light autumn breezes all the more lovely for the two and a half uninterrupted, productive practice hours. Right now I'm sitting outside, listening to the shouts of children enjoying Pause (recess) at the elementary school and to the church bells up the road chiming 12:00.

Later, I will go out with Elias for our regular go-grocery-shopping-almost-every-day-because-your-fridge-is-small-plus-you're-a-Hausfrau-therefore-you-have-time-to-shop-every-day experience. Grocery shopping in Germany is BYOEFB (bring your own ecologically friendly bags). Because you don't buy very much stuff at any one time (how many times must I remind you, your fridge is small), the check-out counter is only 4 feet long, giving you about two feet to put your items down and two feet for the checker to ring them up and push them forward and for you quickly to bag them before the next customer needs the space. As you bag your items, you think about how the small check-out space balances not only with the small fridge at home but also with the population-density-demands-packing-maximal-necessities-into-minimal-spaces rule. Because roads are narrow and cars are cramped, you also appreciate that there are four grocery stores, a fruit store, and two bakeries packed within easy walking distance.

Occasionally you will meet an eccentric German who likes to buy in bulk, like Stefan's mom's hairdresser. He throws up his hands at the diminutive packages of Philidelphia (as Bavarians call American cream cheese) sold at Tengelmann, and instead buys the two-kilo tub at the German Costco equivalent. He stores it in the large refrigerator in his shed, because the fridge won't fit into his kitchen.

Heuweiler

Apologies in advance for the poor quality of the photos; I took them with my "Handy" (cell phone).

Having covered southeast Freiburg pretty well on Tuesday, I decided to explore northeast Freiburg today. As usual, I looked at my map before setting off. A path along the train tracks would take me straight out of town. Straight, as in no turns, as in really hard to mess up this time. Seemed pretty safe.

Oh my goodness, this is a gorgeous part of the world. Tree-lined city paths yielded to fertile farmland. The corn was high, the grass was green, and the storks and crows were happy. And lo, off in the distance was scenic Heuweiler, with its pretty church rising on a hill above the farmhouses. How could I resist? I was rewarded for turning east: along the road were stone markers dating from 1792, indicating the then-border between Austria and Baden.

Once in Heuweiler, it was easy to follow the rolling hills back south, with verdant forest on one side, vineyards on the other, and everything the most stunning, radiant green I've ever seen.

The trail signs started mentioning "Ruine Zaehringer Burg," with a symbol that looked like a rook from chess. Castle-like ruins? How could I resist? Instead of heading directly back into town, I followed those tempting signs, uphill and downhill, into woods and out, through farms and villages, past cows, a dalmatian, and some mighty tempting apple, pear, and plum trees (I hadn't brought any water or snacks), until, at last, I came to the top of a hill and found the tower. What remains dates from the 13th century; the rest was destroyed in a battle in 1525.

I arrived home after four hours and 13 miles, and I didn't get lost even once.

I meant to do that (or, Getting lost, take 2)

One of the problems with living in a pretty city surrounded by beautiful forest-covered mountains with endless hiking trails is that, for the navigationally impaired, the hills all tend to look the same.

Yesterday I decided to explore the neighborhoods in the southern part of Freiburg. I jogged past the Altstadt and over the Dreisam into Wiehre, then into the woods on the other side of the valley and around the diminutive Waldsee. I continued through a city park and came to what I thought was the big soccer stadium--the badenova Dreisamstadion where Freiburg tied Hamburg 1:1 on Sunday. Back into the hills I shifted from jogging to hiking and figured if I generally veered left, I'd be back home relatively quickly.

Near what was supposed to be the end of my journey, I emerged from the woods atop a hill to admire the view of the Muenster, but below me, Freiburg was nowhere to be seen. Thanks to the mapping and navigation options on my trusty Garmin Forerunner 205, I learned that my internal compass was seriously broken--apparently I had never turned left--and that to get home I needed to go 4305 miles due west (ah, that'd be Durham, NC). I eventually arrived back in Herdern with 10 miles of pavement and trails behind me, having seen places I never would have thought to visit otherwise: Kappel, from afar, and Littenweiler; Freiburg's older Möslestadion (had it been the badenova Stadion, I'm sure I wouldn't have gotten lost); and some mean-lookin' Hello-Kitty style Ninja graffiti along the Dreisam.

Herdern

Our apartment is in a neighborhood called Herdern. Up the street is the St. Urban catholic church. Bells ring before every service. Sunday mornings are especially musical, with interesting little melodic patterns emerging as the higher bells are joined by the lower ones.

There's a small farmer's market in the church square twice a week, with fruits, vegetables, cheeses, eggs, meats, flowers, and more varieties of olives than I knew existed.

The roads and footpaths behind the church (the above photo was taken from one) lead up into the hills; many follow canals or natural creeks. If you stay out of the woods, you get some nice panoramic views of Freiburg over the occasional vineyard.

Elias and I took a walk this evening and found two musicians hanging out near the top of the hill. They had brought their acoustic guitars, a mike, and some lawn chairs, and were sitting in the middle of the sidewalk next to their parked car, singing and jamming away.

Ein Musikalischer Spaß

Freiburg is apparently a city in which laborers and civil servants find subtle ways to express strongly held opinions. Today I learned that someone in Freiburg's city planning department was a Wagnerphile.

I was exploring the neighborhood north of our apartment when I looked up and noticed that three street signs at a five-way intersection were for Brucknerstr., Richard-Strauss-Str., and Richard-Wagner-Str.

"Ah," I thought, "the late Romantics intersection! Must be one of those suburby areas where all the streets are named after a common theme." (This suburb is relatively old, however; one of the houses had 1934 in plaster relief on its exterior.)

I continued down the street and laughed out loud at the next corner, where Brahmsstrasse met Richard-Wagner-Str. Despite the composers' divergent views on musical progress, here their paths permanently intersected. Perhaps the city planner had a sense of humor.

At the next corner, I laughed again: the intersection of Schumannstrasse and Richard-Wagner-Str. But wait a sec...Wagner got the through street; and while Stauss, Bruckner, and Wagner flowed seamlessly into one another, both Brahms and Schumann ended at Wagner. Let's see now, Wagner gave us 15 hours of leitmotifs (and OK, a few gorgeous overtures), and Brahms gave us four of the greatest symphonies and two of the most spectacular piano concertos ever composed (plus the song "Sonntag," with its totally sexy upward leap of a major 9th at the words "Das tausendschöne Herzelein"--man, it makes my knees weak every time)--and Wagner gets the through street?

Mendelssohnstr., alas, was nowhere to be seen. (Indeed, I checked my Freiburg map when I got home and there isn't a Mendelssohnstr. anywhere in town. We're talking 64 years post-WWII. Shame on you, Freiburg.)

Next street: Schubertstr., a through street, followed by Haydnstr. Across Wagnerstr., Haydn becomes a footpath with several large, permanently placed recycling bins--a commentary on Haydn's reuse of musical motifs?

Rather than ending at Bachstr., Wagner ends at Händelstr. Of course, Bach permeates the Altstadt, with its several kilometers of canals, or Bächle (diminutive for Bach, which means stream).

Somewhat irritated by the lack of Mendelssohnstr., I turned back and walked down Schumannstr., where I was pleased to discover an actual Joh.-Seb.-Bach-Str. Apparently Bach led directly to Schumann, not Wagner; I can live with that.

There's also a Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Str., a short footpath between Schumann and Schubert. Really now, Weber but not Mendelssohn?

Getting lost

Last night, I got out my list of formal-you pronouns and phoned Herr Professor D. at his private number to talk about organ lessons. Even with the list, I panicked under the pressure of declining formal-you-accusative (Sie) and formal-you-dative (Ihnen), but deftly recovered by avoiding all sentences that required either. It was a pleasant conversation, and hopefully I will be back in the organ swing of things by the time we meet in person in September.

With little to do today between dropping Elias off and picking him up, I decided to figure out a new running route. My friend Robin has observed that running is a great way to get to know a new place. To that, I'll add, so is getting lost, which I'm quite adept at in Germany despite my Garmin GPS toy.

One of the many lovely things about our neighborhood is that you can be halfway up a small mountain and in the middle of the woods within about a fifteen minute hike. I carefully studied my city map before setting off and planned a mostly flat, 4-mile jogging loop. I hiked up to the fitness trail in the woods, and double checked the map posted there (which says, sunnily, "Exercising twice weekly makes you fit!"--an odd piece of advice for anyone with the energy to hike to the trail in the first place).

There are many more trails in the woods than are shown on the maps, and at one three-way intersection with five trail signs pointing in four different directions, I took the far left rather than the near one and zig-zagged a few miles down the other side of the hill, finally emerging near the University Sports Complex, considerably farther from home than planned. Fortunately, Freiburg is filled with helpful landmarks, including the Dreisam river, which I followed back into town. The path along the river is beautiful, with babbling brook, weeping willows, grassy playgrounds (one with a zip line!), gorgeous tall houses (think Chicago brownstones with a European flair), and fit students everywhere--all of which made getting lost on a leisurely afternoon well worth while.

Stefan has also been enjoying the easy access to mountains. Yesterday after dinner, he rode up Schauinsland--40 kilometers round trip, with an elevation difference of ~900 meters. He said there must have been fifty other cyclists on the road with him. I asked if he had passed any, and he said no, but that several had passed him. "Freiburgians are really fit," he explained--and this is from a guy who bikes to work every day and rides metric centuries a few times a month back home.

Cultural differences

Yesterday, we moved into our apartment in Freiburg. After six weeks of traveling, we've finally emptied our suitcases and put them into storage. It feels good to have a space to call our own.

Around the corner from our apartment building is a lovely little fountain--a rectangular stone basin that receives a constant stream of water from a patinaed spout with a floral motif. A plaque above the spout reads "Verschmutzung verboten!," which means "Dirtying forbidden!"

I love what this sign says about German culture. First, it assumes that anyone who would consider befouling a pretty fountain--let us call such persons "vandals"--can read. This is logical, as Germany's literacy rate is one of the highest in the world. Second, it assumes that literate vandals will be dissuaded by a sign that tells them mucking up the fountain is verboten. Perhaps German vandals are too obtuse to understand that dirtying fountains is inappropriate; thus, telling them it isn't allowed will correct their wayward urges.

I maintain that a mere sign will not stop anyone low enough to consider verschmutzing a fountain; Stefan maintains, "it will, if they were brought up right."

Is Stefan correct on this one? Freiburg is the most graffiti-covered city I've ever visited in Germany--graffiti in the Altstadt, graffiti on our apartment building, graffiti on bridges and signs and trees. There are clearly people around who are willing to verschmutz things that most people would recognize ought not be verschmutzed. The fountain, with its forceful, exclamation-point enhanced, cast bronze command, appears untainted.

Yet observe the four mysterious, cement-filled spots around the plaque. What was on the wall before? A Jugendstil flourish, chiseled off by someone unaware of the rules? Or a previous authoritative order, absconded with by vandals who learned about irony im Gymnasium?

Speaking of Schmutz and cultural differences, a word is also in order about prepositions and the Wasser Klo (WC). After 19 years of visiting Germany, I have finally learned to say "aufs Klo" ("on the water closet") rather than "ins Klo" ("in the water closet"), for Germans call the toilet itself the Klo, as opposed to the tiny narrow closet in which it resides, and they laugh at you (appropriately) when you tell them you have to go into the toilet. There is more to be said about German toilets--particularly the special platform within the bowl--but I can't bring myself to write about that on a public blog.