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sprechebluegrass · 8 years ago

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Sprechen über Ulm

Our penultimate destination city was Ulm, along the Danube River on the western edge of Bavaria. The Danube actually marks the dividing line between Bavaria and the state of Baden-Wurttemburg. The city of about 100,000 people has a long history and enjoyed the status of Free Imperial City under the Holy Roman Empire. It was large, and important enough, to have a good degree of autonomy during those days of disjointed rule. The city’s name was first mentioned in 850 CE. For a long time, the city occupied both sides of the Danube, but like so many things, that all changed when the area was conquered by Napoleon in the early 19th century.

The Minster illuminated at night. Today, the struggle in preservation is apparently related to the large number of revelers who use the sandstone foundation as a urinal on a regular basis.

Today, it’s most famous site is undoubtedly the Ulm Münster (Minster). To date, it lays claim to the tallest church spire in the world, reaching over 530 feet into the sky. While the church dates back far longer, most of the structure is from the Medieval period. The spire was not completed, however, until the late 19th century.

The Minster towers amid the rubble of the 1945 bombings. Three separate raids destroyed over 80% of the buildings in the city center.

The church is one of the few places in the city to survive three bombing raids in late 1944 and the spring of 1945, near the end of WWII. Like many of Germany’s giant churches, the building was likely spared due to a combination of some latent religious and historical respect and due to the functionality of the building. These structures often served as markers for pilots who used the location of the obvious sites who were targeting other areas in the city.

Inside the church is equally impressive, though it lacks the artifacts and draw of the great Catholic cathedrals in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. You won’t find any relics or clothing of the saints, but instead a bit of controversy dating to the Nazi era. The sculpture of the Archangel Michael that dominates the interior was designed as a memorial to the fallen of WWI. Unlike many of the WWI memorials, however, it reflected a tone of anger and revenge rather than the typical morose and apologetic elements of so many WWI memorials. Its revanchist feeling perhaps explains how it survived the Nazi era. The fact that it wasn’t installed in the church until the Nazis were in power, however, makes it a point of controversy to this day.

A vengeful archangel looms large above the congregation.

The city center that was essentially wiped out left nearly 25,000 people homeless and killed nearly 1,000 people. Among the structures that were lost was Albert Einstein’s childhood home, just a short walk away from the Minster. Today, this location is marked by a unique if odd memorial to commemorate the important German scientist and human.

The inscrutable Einstein memorial.

Since so much of the city was destroyed in the war, the citizens only selectively rebuilt some of the original structures. This gives the city center a decidedly open and modern feel compared to many German cities, even others destroyed by the war.

One building that was restored, however, was the city hall. The original building dates to 1370, but massive restoration was required after the bombing. While the internal elements of the structure were all but gone after the late 1944 raid, much of the external building did survive, including the frescoes and the clock. The astronomical clock that dates to 1520 and it is fully functioning again today, though slightly less impressive and interesting than the one in Prague. The frescoes on the building detail both Biblical and ancient parables and tales.

The Ulmer astronomical clock, including the zodiac signs of course.

We also spent some time walking through the old Fisherman’s Quarter, where many half-timbered houses were either restored or still stand. It’s in this area where the Blau and Danube Rivers meet and the city was originally settled. Today it’s the more hip area of the city, but once housed the city’s craftsmen.

Sam and the dogs outside a quintessential half-timbered frame house in the Fisherman’s Quarter.

The area’s most famous spot, the Schiefe Haus or Crooked House, was built in the 14th century. Its location along the Blau canals allowed for lots of trade for this building and others in the area. Shortly after its construction, however, the foundation began to slide backwards into the river. By 1620, the first attempt to save the building was completed and its structure remains largely the same since then. In 1995, it was converted into a hotel, which lays a Guinness claim to the coveted title of “most crooked hotel in the world.”

The back of the Schiefe Haus leaning over the Blau.

The leaning second floor. We were unable to venture inside to see if the inner floors mirror the external structure.

Other half-timbered sites in the quarter include the Schönes Haus or Beautiful House. This building dates to the early 16th century, with the unique fresco of the city coming in 1717. It is another quintessential example of this type of architecture.

A walk on the pedestrian path along the Danube takes you onto the ramparts of the old city walls. Just a short walk from the Fisherman’s Quarter, these walls showcase the medieval history of the area. The Crooked House isn’t the only leaning feature of the area either. The Metzgerturm, or Butcher’s Tower, is one of the old city gates into medieval Ulm. The roughly 100 foot tower also suffered structurally from the marshy soil and today leans slightly at about 3 degrees, just a bit less than the more famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. The name supposedly came from an incident in which the town butchers were caught adding sawdust to their sausages. If there’s one thing you don’t do in Germany, it’s mess with the sausage quality. As as result they were locked in this tower. When the mayor came to visit the town, the butchers cowered in fear in one corner of the tower, which resulted in its characteristic lean.

A German soldier in the 1940s contemplating sausage quality perhaps. The tower behind displays its lean while the pre-bombing buildings are on display.

A view from the ramparts across the Danube River into Bavaria and the city of Neu Ulm.

Our final stop on the morning out of the city was the gift shop of what I’ve decided is the top German brewery. Gold Ochsen, whose slogan is the “flowing gold,” makes some of my favorite beer that I’ve sampled in my time here. We bought a few hard to find makes and some other trinkets before making our way out of town.

#travel #Germany #ulm #fachwerk hause #half timbered houses #danube #river #churches #steeple #people

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