Catholic church and Jewish cemetery

Yesterday I bid adieu to the St. Petrus Canisius organ with a few adrenaline-pumping run-throughs of Franck's Grande Pièce Symphonique and Mendelssohn's sixth organ sonata. While the Mendelssohn should transfer decently enough from the 32-register Rieger to the (oh dear) 8-register Walker at my gig back home, the Franck deserves better and has me chomping at the bit to get back into the demo cycle at Duke. Aeolian and Flentrop organs, here I come.

I was sorry that Complainant Number Two didn't show up to kvetch, as I had been looking forward to congratulating her on finally driving me away from the church forever, never to return. But in her place, a soft-spoken older gentleman appeared behind the organ bench and politely inquired about the practice schedule. I referred him to the secretary and regular organist. One Franck and one Mendelssohn later, there he was, sitting in the back of the church. As I left, he said, "that was lovely, really lovely. Are you preparing for a concert? When will you be playing again?" In retrospect, it was probably good that Complainant Number Two wasn't there, as the meeting of matter and anti-matter would have annihilated the sanctuary.

On the way home, I contemplated whether to stop by the Jewish cemetery, a place I hadn't realized I had been driving past four times a week for the past three months until the BZ published an article on the cemetery a few days ago. I was still waffling when I turned on the car radio, and what should be playing but Mahler's "Songs of a Wayfarer" in a chamber arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg. Oy gevalt. I took the hint and parked.

The cemetery is relatively new. Between 1424 and 1806, Jews were prohibited from living in Freiburg. In 1863, changes to Baden's laws finally allowed Freiburg's resident Jews to form a congregation. The cemetery was founded in 1870. It is still used today but is nearing capacity.

The cemetery has a noticeable absence of gravestones marking death dates in the 1940s. There is of course a memorial "to the Jewish victims of the Gewaltherrschaft [tyranny], 1933-1945." But the memorial most interesting to me was "to our fallen sons of the World War, with thankfulness and reverence, 1914-1918." I've seen cross after cross honoring WWI soldiers of various towns, but never paused to think that some of the fallen were left off the lists because they weren't Christian.

Update 22 Dec. 2009: A friend insists that Jews were well enough integrated into German society during WWI that their names would have been included in WWI memorial monuments, even on crosses. So I should have said, it never occurred to me that Jews were fighting for the fatherland alongside Christians during WWI, given what followed in the 1930s.

Totenkoepfe

If Totentaenze in the cemetery aren't your thing, consider Totenkoepfe...

Be merciful to us in the scooters

Nothing cheers up a mourner like a good Totentanz (dance of death). The tradition of these allegorical depictions of Death doing his rounds dates back to the 14th century. The charming frescoes below--20th-century restorations of 18th-century originals--can be found outside over the entrance to the St. Michael's chapel in Freiburg's old Friedhof, where they teach us that Death works hard, plays hard, and spares no one.

The couplets were obviously painted before German spellings and noun capitalization were standardized. While Stefan and I were trying to decipher the rhymes, we ran the whole shebang through "Google Translate." The results were not very helpful, but the program did generate the line "Be merciful to us in the scooters," so it was clearly worth the effort.

Hier schlafft das kindt, dort ewig wacht,
weil ihm den Todt ein Music macht.

[Here sleeps the child, there wakes eternally,
for Death makes music for him.]

Das ABC kaumb schreibt der Knab,
Ruefft ihn der Todt schon in das grab.

[Hardly has the youth written his ABCs
when Death calls him already to the grave.]

Beim Haar der Todt ergreift den Kopf,
Zu diser Wueth taugt ihm der Zopf.

[Death grips the head by the hair,
the braid is useful for that anger.]

Zu fechten, zu spihlen, die Jugendt ist gwohnt,
dem alter der Jugendt der Todt nit verschont.

[To fence and to play, youth is accustomed,
Death spares not the youth for his age.]

Mit aschen Zierth der Todt das Haupt,
Die besser als der puder taugt.

[Death decorates the head with ashes,
which are better than powder.]

Der Todt allein das Creutz abnihmbt,
Das ihm der Ehemann selbst bestihmbt.

+ Ehe-Stand

[Death alone removes the cross
that the bridegroom takes upon himself.]

[+ The State of Matrimony]

Sey uns doch gnaedig
in dem Gricht,
und nit nach maaß der suenden
Richt!

[Be merciful to us in the scooters in judgment,
and don't judge by the measure of sin!]

Der eigne kopf macht lauter Zanck,
Dem Todt darumb vor disen danck.

[Your own head stirs lots of trouble,
for which Death is thankful.]

Zu fahren zu reuthen der Todt ist bereuth,
Damit er den Adel erhalte zur beuth.

[Death is prepared to travel by foot or horse,
so he can gain nobility as his loot.]

Dem betler in der Hungers not
Der Todt ihm ist das liebste brod.

[For the starving beggar,
Death is the best of bread.]

Die schwarze Mehs lis ich vor dich,
Die Huelf darvon hof ich vor mich.

[The black Mass I read before you,
and for that I hope to receive help.]

Beim pflueg der Baur das Brod gewint,
Beim pflueg den Baur der Todt auch nimt.

[By the plough, the farmer wins his bread,
By the plough, Death also takes the farmer.]

Du Narr, was huelfft die gelt begier,
Heunt kombt der Todt, was nimbst mit dir?

[You fool, how does the lust for money help you?
Today Death comes, and what do you take with you?]

Der alte Friedhof

Freiburg's Alter Friedhof (old cemetery) was dedicated in 1683; the last burial there was in 1872. Situated a short distance from the Altstadt, in Neustadt/Herdern, the Friedhof is frequented by visitors looking for a quiet, meditative place. The array of moss-covered gravestones is both beautiful and macabre: weeping angels, sleeping beauties, cherubs, wreaths, skulls.


The day after Christmas in 1999, during the wind storm Lothar, a large tree crashed down in the middle of the cemetery. Narrowly missing several gravestones (and probably crushing a few), the tree kept some roots in the ground; green leafy branches continue to grow out of the horizontal trunk. A plaque next to it quotes Job 14:7: "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease."

This evening, Elias and I walked through the nearly pitch-black cemetery to its 18th-century chapel for a concert of early music. The highpoint was getting to see the inside of the usually locked chapel, with its pressed glass windows, paintings by Johann Christian Wentzinger, and little sculpted cherubs hovering over the alter. The pews, like those in so many Baroque churches here, were clearly designed as an earthly reminder of the painful torments of hell. The concert featured a soprano, Zink (cornett--an instrument that sounds a lot like a trumpet but has a body similar to a woodwind), viola da gamba, and small organ, and exposed me to hitherto unimagined variations in tuning systems.

Wandering through the cemetery earlier today, I finally found a tombstone I had searched for previously. A white marble column marks the grave of Bertha Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, nee Eissenhardt, wife of Felix Mendelssohn's son Carl. Carl was a historian who was appointed professor at the University of Freiburg in 1868; Bertha died in childbirth in 1870 at the age of 22.