st. petri, one of the two churches in my hometown.
... what is left of november 2019 are these things: golden crisp tree leaves, old masonry telling of a time far gone in history, graveyard visits and the vague and undefined fear of looming death ( but also the preparation to the thought of embracing it ), finding places of worship and faith and detecting a spiritual closeness to them ( even though a god is not in your heart - and never will be ), nature's last rearing up before descending into months of hibernation, a celebration with cake and a walk through a favourite city - being grateful to experience it all with a lighter heart.
here are some more bits and pieces of a week in november, almost two years ago, that found me strangely connected and disconnected to and from life.
the wonderful tombstone in front of st. petri's chapel. the engravings are barely readable anymore, which always fills me with sadness as we don't get to remember the person that was once buried here. i feel like i should try to research what this tomb is all about, maybe next time i'm going to revisit schloßvippach. there's definitely some info somewhere, maybe in the village's little museum, or in some of the old honorary publications on the village that my dad has stacked away somewhere. asking some of the elders might also help! maybe i will be able, at some point, to bring light into this matter.
the street next to the castle, a jubilating image of glorious autumn.
the pond west to the former castle...
...and to the north of it. clearly a much different image than this one from a foggy day.
the apple tree in a neighbour's garden.
the day i had my gynecologist appointment, the weather was deceptively jovial. this is the goethe & schiller archive, which is situated not far from the practice of my gynecologist. it is the oldest literary archive in all of germany and houses the legacy of several famous german writers and personalities, with of course johann wolfgang von goethe & friedrich schiller's work being some of the most important ones!
it sits quite majestically on a little hill overlooking the ilm river. the role model for this building ( constructed between 1893 & 1896 ), initiated by the grand duchess of saxe-weimar-eisenach, sophie of the netherlands, was the petit trianon in the park of the palace in versailles in france!
the ilm river below the archive.
me after the appointment - mirrored inside a very cool power transformer. i was feeling very surreal after the talk with the doctor, and somehow this cube caught my eye at a peculiarly adequate time. maybe i also wanted to capture an image of myself to prove i was still alive at that moment, still present, not dead yet. kind of like when you pinch yourself sometimes to see if you are not dreaming.
the mirror-clad transformator.
this is the karlsmühle ( karl's mill ), a water mill right next to the river. listed as a cultural monument, it is in a rather bad shape, though, basically a ruin and still continuing to fall into disrepair. i hope that someday they will revive it, so that the old mill, which existed since 1375, won't have to be torn down eventually. it seems, there are plans to sponsor the revitalization so my hope is high! it is such a beautiful place, and since it was an exemplary mill in times of the industrialization in weimar, it really should be more honoured and valued.
on a whim i decided to visit the historical main cemetery, where my maternal grandparents both have a grave site. every spring and every autumn my family goes there to tend to their grave - and we also always take this opportunity to have a walk through the cemetery. it is - in my eyes - one of the most beautiful cemeteries in germany, historically important in so many ways. everytime we visit i discover new details and my love for it gets refueled.
this memorial was designed by walter gropius, director of the bauhaus university while it was situated in weimar. we pass it by every time we head to my grandparent's grave, and it's always been a symbol of resistance and opposition to me. it was erected to honour the the 9 victims of the kapp-putsch in weimar in 1920, who were shot at a worker's assembly in the aftermath during the national strike ( the biggest that germany had ever gone through ) that ensued. of course, these 9 people were not the only ones that died, all over germany workers were massacred and shot dead while taking part in the strike. which, sadly, despite this being such a big chance to continually establish democratic practices and giving the majority of the people a powerful voice to eventually end inequalities, it would not end up saving the weimar republic. but would strengthen the nationalist parties and therefore would lead to the coming into power of adolf hitler. this putsch was one of those instances were the fight against nationalist hardliners backfired grotesquely, because it first looked like they would not gain power thanks to the worker's strikes, but then when the next elections came along, which were held soon after, most of the moderate and some left-leaning parties lost immensely in popularity, which cleared the way for the nationalists to come into governance. the reason for that was the fact that after the government returned to berlin after the putsch and ordered to stop the strike, but the people continued their strikes ( ruhraufstand ). so the the army ( even some parts that were also involved in the coup previously ) were executing this order in all severity, catering to even more fatalities, which made the nation turn against the weimar republic.
the memorial was torn down by nazis in 1936 ( of course, because it reminded sympathizers of nationalists of the resistance they had met during those dramatic times and they would not allow anyone remembering it and maybe find faith in trying something equal to topple the nazi government ). it got reconstructed in 1946, slightly altered, and now stands as a reminder of those turbulent and unfortunate times that would accidentally end up leading to even more disasters and the extinction of millions of lives. while it was created to honour the labour movement ( the lightning was supposed to be a flash of genius, a memorial to the vital mind of the people who went on strike ), it also is testament to a big failure in history, despite the initial good intentions.
the administrative building and mourning hall of the cemetery. it replaced the sepulture chapel near the main entrance as a place to mourn the dead in 1906 ( that building is now dedicated to the soldiers killed in action in the first world war ). there's not much else to find on this beautiful building, which is very strange, considering that it is quite big and actually important for the maintenance of the cemetery?
so many wonderful gravestones and sites are scattered all over the cemetery, it's hard to choose a favourite one. and on every visit i discover a new gem, and sometimes it's something that i have previously passed by a million times! this art nouveau gravestone commemorates the family lins ( probably a wine whole sale family - not a lot of information has been passed down on the lins's ).
the altarpiece shows a scene from the new testament, in which jesus revives the daughter of jairus ( the principal of a synagogue ). one of the names on the gravestones is a maria anna lins ( née jahn ), who lived from 1890 to 1911 - and i think this young woman was the reason of the stone's design. it would at least fit well with the art nouveau aspect. the designer of the stone was someone called josef heise.
i absolutely adore this melancholic gravestone of a contemplative man! the creator was probably josef heise again, the gravesite is dedicated to a family ruppe ( allegedly berthold ruppe - an automobile factory owner initially from apolda, who moved to weimar in his later years ). he definitely looks a bit like the statue, so i think it is not too far-fetched.
a little abstract fountain sculpture thrown in for good measure! i love the sweet embrace of these two figures, one of support and giving each other grounding. i don't know when the fountain was installed, but my guess is somewhen between 1960ies and 1980ies.
an absolutely gorgeous tombstone! the portrait of this young woman is weirdly touching. unfortunately the inscriptions on the grave are very hard to make out, i can only assume that the woman depicted here is an elsbeth hüfner or hübner who died in 1922. maybe her husband was called ernst? sometimes i wish there were people who do researches on historical gravesites and who would publish their findings online somewhere, but it seems like that is not a hobby anyone wants to take on? even historics don't seem to care for the dozens of other historic gravesites on cemeteries, unless it is about a super famous person...
maybe that is something i should look into, perhaps?
but how does one go about that? i don't think you can research stuff like this as a layperson, i think you would have to have at least professional skills in research and maybe have a degree in university studies to have access to archives... does anybody know?
close-up of the relief! she's so incredibly beautiful!
one of the cemetery's most well-known buildings are these two: in the back you can see the ducal burial chapel and in the front the russian orthodox chapel.
the ducal vault shelters several members of the saxe-weimar & saxe-weimar-eisenach ducal family... and for many perhaps most importantly... the caskets of johann wolfgang von goethe and friedrich schiller. the vault was installed between 1823 & 1828 by clemens wenzeslaus coudray. curiously though, the casket of friedrich schiller is empty. though it had housed remains of someone since 1827 to 2008, it has been proven via a genetic test that the person laid to rest here was not goethe's lifelong friend schiller, but actually parts of three various people! schiller's remains were said to have been buried on the jacobsfriedhof, and supposedly found there in 1827 by the mayor of weimar, who wanted to lay schiller's remains to rest on the new cemetery, since the jacobsfriedhof was about to get closed. apparently there were a lot of skulls in the vault that schiller was buried in and the mayor took the biggest one, claiming that that would be schiller's. it was then buried in the new ( now historic ) cemetery in the ducal vault and stayed there for centuries. after the test in 2008 and an ensueing search for his real remains, it is not clear where his bones have gone to... what a mystery! goethe had always wanted to be buried next to his friend, and somehow a funny fantasy is going through my mind now, knowing all this. imagine goethe waking up as a ghost, looking forward to meet his friend schiller in the vault and he has to realize that 3 completely different persons were haunting the casket next to him! i think someone should write a story about this, the possibilities would be endless! you could insert all kinds of funny personalities as the other ghosts, a woman perhaps from the common folk or of nobility, an unread poor beggar or a meddlesome child! in any way, it is such a weird fact, especially since for so many years, people actually believed that schiller was buried there and therefore made pilgrimages to the graves of these famous writers! how strange to know now, that people paid homages to three separate people that nobody really knows who they actually were. i wonder if schiller has been haunting the jacobsfriedhof for all these years, feeling forgotten and forlorn, as nobody visited his gravesite, even though he was one of the greatest writers of germany and widely beloved. 😅
the russian chapel is dedicated to the grand duchess maria pavlovna of russia, grand duke charles frederick's wife, who died in weimar. it was built between 1860 & 1862 and is connected to the ducal vault via an underground passage.
i have always loved the russian chapel the most, with its golden onion domes! surrounding the chapel are some of the oldest and most noble burials of the city, it was a privilege to be buried in the vicinity of the vault and chapel.
it was about to get dark, so please excuse the grainy pictures ^^;
beautiful detail of the chapel entrance.
on a different day i made a bicycle tour with my dad that lead us through the landscapes around my hometown. this cherry tree orchard is very close nearby to my village, it is situated on the hornsberg hill and is a protected landscape. i love visiting it, but i have never made it there in summer, when the cherries are ripe. i'd definitely like to steal a cherry or two one day 😂
we also had a stop at a place i have never been to before, despite it being very close to my hometown! only 17 kms away the small village of werningshausen is known to be a place of religious worship, with st. wigberti monastery being the center of it. the monastery is really something special, because due to thuringia having been part of the GDR for so long - which was known to only give the evangelical church the advantage, which typically does not maintain convents, monasteries and abbeys - they are not found often in this state. in 1973 some men of the evangelical church came to werningshausen to help rebuilt the church and rectory, and to open an oecumenical priory for protestant-lutheran, roman-catholic & greek orthodox brethren. the church, a building from 1776, was meant to be torn down, and of course the brethren were entirely against it and with lots of work and passion they did everything to bring fresh air into the formerly very ruinous church. between 1989 & 2000 the rectory ( from 1750 ) was extended with additional buildings, in which the convent eventually moved in. it's a fascinating story and i definitely applaud the brethren for their hard work on this project, which would help save historic structures, but also help strengthen the community's solidarity and team spirit, which i personally think should be what religion actually is about - building social equity and working towards a goal that will bring together people from all works of life and not excluding anyone for their belief systems, but trying to welcome them in, without dismissing them.
despite some of the buildings being of old origin, modern architecture and design still found a way into it and those elements were wonderfully incorporated into the structures. the actual convent behind the rectory was decidely built in the thuringian studwork style instead of the, at that time, more favoured concrete & steel material, so it wouldn't disturb the traditional atmosphere. but, the renovations allowed a tolerance of modern design elements as well, which i'm gonna show you in a moment.
st. mary's fountain and the monastery church.
these fantastic bronze door entrances are some of the modern additions to the church - i was so smitten with these! the sculptor hildegard hendrichs created them, though i don't know when they were installed. hendrichs's work is rooted in the expressionist style of socialist realism, but at the same time it kind of is separate from that. it feels very meditative and non-propagandist, the figures seem lost in reverie, lost in a surrealist fantasy. i like that a whole lot, it's kind of versatile and universal.
close-up of one of the doors. as a non-believer i have no clue about the image and it's symbolism, and i couldn't find anything on the doors online.
looking into the inner courtyard. in the back you can see the cloister.
continuing our ride we passed by the unstrut river and discovered traces of beaver lumbering! the beavers have returned to the rivers in thuringia since at least a decade, before that they were super rare. i can't remember a time in my childhood in which they would've been present, but i also have to admit that i've never really took notice of it as a kid. my childhood also didn't take place near the bigger rivers like the unstrut or the ilm, we only visited them peripherally. discovering these gnawed on trees is so wild to me, and i am always on the look-out of eventually spotting one of these lumberjacks :)
back home i collected some apples from my parent's garden, and they were perfect after our bike ride - juicy and sweet!
on the day i had my appointment at the specialist practice, my parents accompanied me - sort of to hold my hand and support me in case i would get devastating news, so to speak... when i got out of the doctor's office with the good news you can imagine how relieved my parents were! for me, it was like something heavy fell away from me that cloaked me in a strange nebula, and i think for my parents it must've been the same. maybe even more of an alleviation than to me. i don't know, somehow i always think that my parents suffer more deeply whenever something bad or scary happens with us kids... maybe that's the case with most parents, they never stop caring for you, especially when they love you. their wide smiles and both my mom and dad hugging me after the appointment surely attested to that.
and we all collectively decided to head out for coffee and cake in the very luxurious coffee house of the hotel 'russischer hof' - i had always wanted to check it out and have a taste of the weimar classical atmosphere, which always seems so sophisticated.
and it was everything we hoped for! i drank a perfect hot chocolate - the dense and viscous one - and had a piece of cake...
... of which i don't remember the name anymore 😅 it was delicious anyway.
after such a culinary treat we went on a short walk through weimar. what was formerly the bauhaus museum for a long time ( from 1994 to 2019 ), is now a museum dedicated to the weimar republic. the building it is situated in is actually a carriage building, it was erected by clemens wenzeslaus coudray ( one of weimar's main architects ) at the beginning of the 19th century.
the anna amalia library - one of germany's most important libraries. its emphasis lies in the history of literature and culture, namely german literature from the time of enlightenment & late romanticism. it's a UNESCO heritage site - part of 'classical weimar'. it resides in a building that is called 'green palace', which is funny, because it is not green. maybe it was at some point. the palace was built between 1562 and 1565 by nikolaus gromann. in 2004 a big fire wreaked havoc on the library and destroyed 50.000 volumes of unestimable value, 12.500 of them completely irreplaceable. i remember how shocked everyone was when the news got out, including me, i was 15 at that time. i have never been inside this library, but everyone in thuringia knows about it and how precious its content is, so it felt like a collective trauma. many buildings in weimar i haven't seen from the inside, which is kind of a shame, since i have grown up not too far away and visited the city countless of times. i hope to revise this someday and make it a point to finally check out some of the museums and important buildings more thoroughly and make an acquaintance with what they have to offer. they renovated the library since and it is gleaming with splendor again, especially the very beautiful rococo hall.
on the platz der demokratie ( democracy square ) in front of the library, are some more noticeable buildings and this statue - the equestrian statue of grand duke carl august. he was famous for being a patron of intellectually brilliant people who were active at his court. the walled in castle-like structure in the back is called the 'red palace' - a renaissance building from 1576. it is also part of the anna amalia library - its function is now being a research library & study center. the green-ish palace behind the statue is a building called 'rößlersches haus' from 1785.
view from platz der demokratie down towards the stadtschloss ( city palace ) on the right and gelbes schloss ( yellow palace ) on the left. the city palace is the most important castle of the inner city, it's been the official residence for many dukes in history. the first castle at the same spot goes way back, probably about 500 years. over this time span the castle has been destroyed, rebuilt, renovated & constantly modernized, so it is hard to say definitely when certain parts of it got constructed. the whole castle is a mishmash of styles, reaching from medieval renaissance to neo-classical reminiscences.
looking back to anna amalia library and the last palace on the square, the fürstenhaus ( duke's house - the house with the golden balcony balustrades ). it houses the conservatory franz liszt these days. the architect was anton georg hauptmann, he built the structure after plans of johann gottfried schlegel between 1770 and 1774. apparently he did such a bad job on it that a few years after its construction the ceiling of a hall was already caving in ( which made carl august, who lived inside during that time due to the city palace having been victim of a fire in 1774, move out again soon after 😂 ). hauptmann seems to not have suffered any repercussions from that incident, even though he evidently used cheap material for the construction, instead he blamed everything on the planner, schlegel, who would end up losing his job on this scheme. after that it was used as a parliament and government building for the grand duchy of saxe-weimar-eisenach and during the era of the weimar republic as well.
a slightly blurry image of a very good entrance gate to the backyard of the famous hotel elephant - serving you luxurious accommodations since 1696.
these cute wooden sculptures made to look like chestnut & acorn snails i found near the coffeehouse residenz - another infamous coffeehouse near the city palace ( you can see the patio of it in the back and part of the palace as well ). the resi ( as it is lovingly called by weimar citizens ) is the oldest coffee house in weimar, it was established in 1839!
last, but not least on our evening walk in weimar, the restaurant jagemann's. in this house actress karoline jagemann ( one of weimar's most famous actresses in the classic era ) had her principal domicile. she lived here with her son, who was a product of a liaison with carl august, the grand duke. she was his mistress until his death in 1828, after which she retired from the stage and her job as a director of the state theater and moved to dresden where she also died. she was said to have been an integral part of plotting against goethe, who was the director of the famous weimar state theater, the result of that plot was that goethe retreated from that position in 1817. the validity of that claim is probably false, it seems like there was a lot more to it than this woman being hungry for power. she was later shunned from weimar society for these rumours, which was the reason why she moved to dresden.
jagemann's seems to offer exquisite culinaries, their website makes my mouth water!
and what else is left now, after this potpourri of images?
other than the fact that i wasn't diagnosed with breast cancer basically this: that despite receiving possibly devastating news, or thinking about looming sickness and death, you still can witness the beauty of this world and make it heal your heart in a way that every little step you take forward, seems like a step towards accepting the fleetingness of life and an appreciation for it while you are walking this earth.
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