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.

Those little black dots actually mean something

From the Munich Die Abendzeitung TV guide: a blurb describing an upcoming documentary about how, on Christmas Eve, 1818, in Oberndorf, near Salzburg, Austria, Franz Xaver Grueber composed a melody for a text by Joseph Mohr. "Silent Night, Holy Night" has since been translated into more than 350 different languages and dialects, and is one of the most iconic Christmas songs ever written.

The music the newspaper pulled from the image files to accompany the blurb? Felix Mendelssohn's "Song Without Words" Op. 38, No. 6, ("Duetto").

Reunification day, Ravenna Schlucht, and music

Saturday, Oct. 3, was the 19th anniversary of German reunification; November 9 will mark 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Southern Germany celebrated by closing up shop and going hiking.

We took my parents for a hike up the Ravenna Schlucht, a pretty, narrow gorge near Freiburg. The trail followed a series of small waterfalls up to a functioning mill house, where a water wheel was powering two rapidly rotating stones to grind whole grain into coarse meal.

Afterward, we headed to St. Peter for an organ concert: a recreation of Mendelssohn's 1840 "Bach Denkmal" (Bach memorial) organ concert at the Thomaskirche (Bach's church) in Leipzig. In 1840, Mendelssohn performed several compositions by Bach, then closed with an improvisation on "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" and the motive B-A-C-H (German for B flat-A-C-B natural). Yesterday's concert, featuring organist Johannes Goetz, repeated all of the same works by Bach and closed with a fleshing out (by Rudolf Lutz) of Mendelssohn's unpublished fragments on the aforementioned themes. After the concert, Elias and my dad played a game of chess in front of the church.

It has been a musical weekend. Friday night, we attended a concert in the Muenster featuring various choral psalm settings, including works by Mendelssohn, Dvorak, and Kiel, and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.

We have not been to a single concert this year in Germany that has not included a composition by Mendelssohn, born 200 years ago in 1809.

Thanks y'all

Sehr Geehrte Leserinnen und Leser ("very honorable readeresses and readers"):

Thanks for all the feedback on the blog, both via comments and via email. Blogger.com refuses to let me respond to comments with comments at the moment, so here's a full-fledged entry to catch up on issues/questions/concerns you've raised, for all you enquiring minds who want to know. In no particular order:

A zip line is a pulley, sometimes with a seat attached, suspended on a wire cable on an incline.

Thanks, Teofrastus, for contributing the Spanish word hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliofobia (fear of long words), which measures in at a delightfully ironic 35 letters (assuming I counted correctly). Helen says we left "Gesellschaft" (company) out of Donaudampfshifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensgattin, which would bring that word up to 49 letters. I pointed out to her that "Starnbergersee" has nine more letters than "Donau," but she objected that there isn't a steamboat company on the Starnbergersee. There is one on the Danube--so we're not just goofing around making up words here.

No, I'm not having too much fun in Germany. Being a cultural ambassador is hard work.

Ah, the platform in the toilet bowl--the #1 comment-generating topic to date! What to say.... According to Freud, a child's first gift to its parents is poop (a child who withholds such gifts is anal-retentive; and note the delighted fuss parents make over successful potty-training). The platform offers toilet bowl users the opportunity to admire, shall we say, the fruits of their labor well into adulthood. By the way, when doing routine cleaning, it is a bad idea to drizzle liquid hand soap on the platform, though the bubbles you get after flushing are mighty impressive.

Never fear, there are Beethoven and Mozart streets in Freiburg.

On the lack of a Mendelssohnstrasse: There's one in Basel and one in Offenburg, so it isn't a regional thing. I'm guessing the composer street names in the Freiburg 'burb date from the 1930s--big years for German Nationalism. A few years after Mendelssohn's untimely death in 1847, Wagner published an anonymous, remarkably anti-Semitic article on "Judaism in Music," claiming that Jews just can't write anything good and criticizing Mendelssohn's music as underdeveloped and derivative (and Heinrich Heine's poetry as false and inauthentic). So an intersection between Mendelssohnstr. and Richard-Wagner-Str. truly would have been sweet to see.

Stefan is a German citizen; Elias and I are American citizens. Stefan hasn't voted in an election since he moved to the U.S. in 1989. If he gets his act together, he'll vote this fall. We're here until the end of December.

Yes indeed, people rabidly guard their Restmuell bin space. Observe this bin, photographed this evening in the Altstadt. Know what the red doohickey on top is? That's right, it's a lock. I did manage to find a Restmuell bin without a lock downtown this afternoon (not that I would ever, ever sneak my own trash into someone else's bin, of course).

When we're back in the U.S., we'll have to invite all of Elias's java-drinking buddies over for Kuchen and decaf.

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?