The Significance of Giving

Did you leave your boots out last night for Sankt Nikolaus to fill with presents from the sack he carried over his shoulders as he roamed the lands in search of good children?  If you have been good since he last came this night a year ago I am sure he didn’t forget you.

Over the blog years I have mentioned the myth and mystery of the legend of Bishop Nicholas The Miracle Worker several times, this link will take you to a story of what happened one Sankt Nikolaus eve in our family.

Today, Nicholas, in the guise of Santa Claus, is the Bringer of Presents rather than the Miracle Worker. Christmas is just around the corner and the orgy of shopping and giving continues. We give throughout the year, of course, always have done, since time immemorial. I bet the first caveman worked a tiger’s tooth to present his inamorata with a trinket to adorn herself.  Giving has been an important part of mankind’s history, an opportunity to show our love, respect and affection for those we hold dear. Psychologically, it appears that the giver often benefits more from the act of giving than the recipient.

"Have you done your Christmas shopping? I’m all finished already, I usually start in October and by the beginning of December I only have a few trifles left to get.”  This statement is not at all an unusual one, it’s a sort of rite of passage to differentiate between the efficient, grown up ones, and those who leave everything until the last minute. Which hat fits you?

More and more I come across a small, but growing, minority of people who feel uncomfortable about our habit of splurging and dishing out often thoughtless, meaningless, unwanted tat. These people make donations to charity, both in their own name as well as the recipient's name. I can’t see a child being terrifically happy when told: "the money for your present went towards a bed for a homeless child,  a donkey sanctuary in Transylvania, to feed a family of four over Christmas. Maybe the child would feel a warm glow momentarily, but the lack of a present would be felt much more keenly.

There are people who make a present of their time at Christmas, working in homeless shelters which take in rough sleepers over the holidays. I have the greatest respect for them and their selflessness. They are not always people who themselves are on their own, I have been told that whole families derive great pleasure from such an act of kindness.

And giving for the sake of receiving is always wrong. We have a saying on the Lower Rhine which goes: “if you throw a sausage to gain a side of bacon you may be a good reckoner but you have no idea what giving means.

Giving presents can be a vexed business. My Dad used to say, year after year, “just a small token of appreciation will do, nothing fancy, nothing ostentatious, nothing grand or expensive.” Poor man, that is exactly what he got, a pouch of tobacco, some cigars, socks, a bottle of Schnapps. I believe he was happy. Besides, in the early postwar years we had no money to buy anything that wasn’t absolutely useful and none the worse for that.

Ephraim Kishon tells the tragicomic story of a spoilt young couple who swore to each other that they would not, would NOT, give each other Christmas presents. Come Christmas Eve they both unpacked   great piles of the most glitteringly expensive gifts. Both had deeply expected the other to break their promise, neither had been able to bear the tension of not-giving - giving in a purely material sense.

I am not Scrooge, I am pro-giving, in a small way. Giving is symbolic. It stands for thoughtfulness, solidarity, affection, closeness, friendship, love. Even a friendly smile, a kind word, an offer of help, a listening ear are gifts worth giving. If anybody wants to add a book and a box of chocolates I will happily accept them.

. . . . a little western flower . . . . .

After all the raving and ranting I’ve done recently, not forgetting moaning and whining, perhaps it’s time I turned my attention to gentler topics. How about the humble pansy? Anyone interested? Thought not. See what I can do.

Let’s start with the common European wild pansy, viola tricolour, also known as Johnny-Jump-Up, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness. And that’s just a few of them in English.

 wild pansy

In German the wild pansy is called, inter alia, Ackerveilchen (viola of the field), Muttergottesschuh (Mother of God’s shoe), Maedchenaugen (maiden's eyes), Schöngesicht (beauteous face) or Liebesgesichtli (Lover’s face).

The English illustrator, Cicely Mary Barker (28 June 1895 – 16 February 1973) was best known for a series of fantasy illustrations depicting fairies and flowers. The wild pansy is one of the flowers used by her in her rather whimsical drawings.
Shakespeare mentions the wild pansy in two of his plays:   In Hamlet, Ophelia, who is mad with grief at the death of her father, rambles on about strewing herbs:  “And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts…” (Act IV, Scene 5.)
And in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon commands Puck to bring him “…a little western flower / Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound / And maidens call it love-in-idleness.” (Act II, Scene 1.)   It is the effect of this natural aphrodisiac that causes the mayhem and entertainment of the entire play!  You could say that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is woven around the magical properties of heartsease.

Georgia O’Keefe produced a very beautiful painting of a black pansy and followed it up with a depiction of a white one.

Wild pansies were used as herbals, to cure venereal disease for instance, acc. to Culpepper; ditto headaches and dizzy spells. The ancient Greeks used it as a love potion and a symbol of fertility.

The violet has ever been the emblem of constancy. There is a French proverb which goes something like this: “Violet is for faithfulness, which shall in me abide, hoping that in your heart too, it shall not hide”.

The German name for the garden pansy is 'little stepmother’ Stiefmutterchen. There is a very sad tale attached to it:

Stepmother, symbolised by the large lower leaf, only allows her own children
to adorn themselves in colourful array.
Her stepchildren, the upper two leaves of the flower, have to remain in the background, clad in modest colours, or plain white.

Sorrow at the poor treatment his own children receive has turned the pistil, representing the father’s hair, white.

Lastly an explanation for the name in English, which is, as so often, a mispronunciation of a foreign name.

A small bouquet of pansies, given by a lover to his love, was called a pensée, - hence pansy - a thought, symbolising devotion and faithfulness, remembrance, honour, even humility.

But mainly it means: "I am always thinking of you".

In other words, the pansy is an all-round excellent fellow; humble though it is. we should plant many more of them, in spite of their dowdy image with some gardeners. The pansy will brighten any spot and is at home equally in the ground as in any kind of container.

Still reading? Well done. I’ll stop now.

My Friend The Tree Is Dead*

For the average German the forest is more than just the sum of the trees. When trees are threatened, Germans go on the warpath. I well remember the time of the late 70s when “sour rain” (i.e. acid rain), supposedly coming from Scandinavia, caused the great dying of the forests, particularly coniferous forests like the Schwarzwald (Black Forest). At the time the damage was thought to be irreversible. In Germany the forest is not only a cultural landscape formed through forestry and the result of modern recreational activities ranging from GPS-guided hikes to treetop trails. Much more than that, the woods and trees possess great symbolic, spiritual and fairytale-like charismatic powers and have always been celebrated in German poetry, art and music. Many of the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm are set in Enchanted Forests.  In this way the forest is deeply rooted in the German consciousness – not only when we are using the woods for recreational purposes.

Two millennia ago, when Germany was 90% woodland, (compared to about 20% now) the army of Hermann defeated the then greatest military power on earth, the Roman army, by setting an ambush in a narrow corridor between  impassable swamps on one side and hilly, thicketed forests on the other, the great battle of the Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD. The victory gave the woodland warriors a symbol of invincibility in the forest.

Even hard-headed German politicians subscribe to the cult of trees; in a 1983 interview Chancellor Helmut Kohl said : mythology,  Germans and the forest, they all belong together.

still standing - beech and truncated horse chestnut

Which brings me to the death of our own ancient horse chestnut. It has been sickening for some time - a few years ago we lightened its load by having the sail trimmed drastically - but during the recent gales on two consecutive days and nights it finally gave up the fight. During the first night the left hand fork came down and the next night the long branch on the right collapsed. No one was hurt but the garden beneath took a direct hit. My heart broke when I saw the terminally damaged giant.

the left fork

There was no help for it, the tree had to come down completely. Tree fellers moved in and set to work, trimming what was left of the canopy, power-sawing, chopping and chipping mercilessly, and carting the slaughtered remains away.

There is now a great gap in the hedge, allowing clear views across the valley; you’d say that’s not so bad, but it also allows the wind coming up the valley funnel newly opened access to the garden, probably bringing down several smaller trees which were damaged in the giant’s fall in the process.

The damage to the woodland garden is considerable, tree fellers trampling all over it during the removal of the horse chestnut hasn’t done it any favours. Fences are down, the leaf mould enclosure is no more, and a few terracotta pots have been shattered, their contents lost in the general mayhem.

As a dedicated tree hugger minus one very special specimen I am very sad.

*Title borrowed from a German song by Alexandra
 "Mein Freund Der Baum Ist Tot".

K is for Karneval - Helau and Alaaf !

Karneval in Cologne, image Fourth Thing

Karneval, the Rhenish name for the Fools' Season, is centuries old - Mardi Gras is an offshoot, but the two share nothing else but a common European ancestry. The Ancient Greeks and Romans celebrated Mardi Gras in the form of spring festivals as early as the 6th century B.C. In medieval times the "Feast of Fools" was celebrated as the last opportunity for merrymaking and excessive indulgence in food and drink before the Solemn Lenten Season. In some areas of Europe Karneval became a theatrical demonstration, an effective way of mocking monarchy, governments and other rulers without being punished.

Karneval is a Catholic tradition and in Germany is found almost exclusively in Catholic regions such as Bavaria and the Rhineland. However, there are Karneval celebrations in some Protestant areas, notably in Berlin and Braunschweig. (Braunschweig’s Karneval procession was cancelled this year at the last minute because of fears over terrorist attacks. I saw grown men weep on the TV news.)

Cologne Karneval is huge. As many as half a million people line the streets some years, dancing and singing and shouting ‘Koelle Alaaf' and swaying (schunkeln) the cold away. The Rose Monday parade which was first held in 1823 is more than 6 km long, with elaborate floats mocking politicians and politics, foreign and home grown, celebrities, curiosities and the carriages bearing 'Karneval Royalty’. There are endless parades of groups on foot, some as small as a dozen, others fifty or more. Dozens of bands provide noisy music, as if the noise from the crowds and the carriages and floats weren’t enough to deafen you. Everybody wears some kind of costume (it keeps you warm). 300 tons of candy are flung into the crowds from the floats, as well as flowers, rag dolls, other small presents and whole bars and boxes of chocolates. Each Karneval society has its own band of ‘soldiers’ with uniforms dating back to Napoleonic times, when the Rhineland was occupied by Napoleon’s forces; when the Prussians sent Napoleon packing, the populace in turn mocked them and their occupation of the Rhineland by dressing in Prussian uniforms,  also represented today.

Karneval, called the fifth season in Germany, the Season of Fools, starts on 11.11 at 11.11 and ends at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. It goes into a sort of temporary hibernation during Advent, Christmas and the New Year celebrations, but comes back in earnest in February, with the last week before lent being an almost non-stop party for members of the ancient and venerable Karneval societies and everyone else who wants to celebrate. Since Karneval originated as a mocking of Royalty, of course there must be a Royal Couple, the Prinzenpaar, who are crowned at the beginning of the season.With them comes the “Hofstaat, the Royal Court."  This consists of the "Hofmarshall" (Prince's Grand Marshall), the "Adjutant" (Princess' Attendant), the "Hofdame” (Lady of the court), and the "Mundschenkin" (Toastmistress and keeper of the wine.) Then there are the very important Princes’ Guardsmen in their tricorns and elegant uniforms.  ‘Funkenmariechen’, in their red and white uniforms are the female equivalent to the town soldiers, who were disbanded by Napoleon. All of these honours don’t come cheap and are highly regarded. The Funkenmariechen, who are an acrobatic corps de ballet, train for months before they perform at Karneval shows, called Sitzungen.

Karneval is very traditional in aspect and procedure. A whole ‘industry' exists for just this season. There is Karneval music, food, cabaret, and Buettenreden, (humourous and satirical rhyming speeches), grand balls and not so grand hops and other festivities all tailor made. During Karneval behaving madly and overindulging is a virtue.

Drunk or sober, in the grip of the mother of all hangovers or happy and fighting fit, on Ash Wednesday it’s all over. Those who feel they have sinned (which is allowed during Karneval) go to confession, are absolved and receive a thumb print in the form of a cross on their forehead and promise to behave well until the next Fool’s Season.

A Family Reunion - All Saints Day - Part III

The more specific maintenance of the graves fell to Uncle Peter and Aunt Katie. They often grumbled about it. Grandfather, who owned the plots, felt that it was only right and proper that the task of looking after the family graves should fall to his surviving son. He was the only one still living in the family home, rent free, as grandfather frequently pointed out. Aunt Johanna, one of his daughters, who lived in  a village less than an hour’s walk across the water meadows away and whose husband had a truck, pleaded ill health, which made her cry a lot every time somebody asked her to do something. Uncle Peter and Aunt Katie carried on working on the graves, spending time and money they could ill afford.  Aunt Katie liked to keep the peace, besides, there was nowhere else for them to go, they were dependent on grandfather’s goodwill. The old man spent little time thanking Aunt Katie for the hard work she did for him, the way she put up with his moods, fell in with his demands and tolerated his high-handed and sometimes scornful treatment of his son, her husband.

The mourners for the day stood around in the biting wind, murmuring platitudes and wishing themselves out of it and back in Aunt Katie’s warm kitchen, but not quite daring to suggest retreat for as long as grandfather stood his ground.

“I wonder who’ll be next”, they said, each hoping it wouldn’t be them but allowing enough suffering into their voices to imply it might be.

“All gone, all of them gone, who knows where.”

“Stupid woman,” I heard father whisper to mother, “dead and gone, with nothing left of them, that’s where.” Father was getting tetchy, mother’s family could be trying at times. He had long ago fallen out with two of his siblings and disliked his own father heartily.

“The old man is going to catch his death of cold”, his daughters muttered, “somebody should get him to move.”

Grandfather was a stubborn old man, he knew the family had had enough but he would be the one to decide when it was time to leave, be the wind ever so chill. He had lost his wife many years ago and celibacy and loneliness had hardened his once kind heart.

But even grandfather couldn’t go on ignoring the cold seeping into his old bones. “How much longer do you want to stay here,” he asked, sounding impatient for the others to make a move. “We’ve done what we came for.” He’d done nothing. “I for one have had enough and I’m off, stay if you want.”

He turned away from the graves and without a backward glance went towards the centre path dividing the cemetery, and made for the main gate.

Women and children scuttled after him, The men followed in a more deliberate, statelier procession.

The short day was ending, we had a train to catch, the widow of grandfather’s second son and her two children had an hour’s walk ahead to reach their home in the next village the other side of Muehlhausen.. Only Uncle Hans had brought his family in his truck. It was too soon after the war, long before the economic miracle took hold; nobody else in the family owned more than a bicycle. Petrol was expensive and not easy to come by, and Uncle Hans never offered anyone a lift.

Aunt Katie provided coffee, while the women cut sandwiches; the talk was loud and free now, the relief at having escaped for another year palpable. They were alive, they had survived, not just the day but the years of hardship and terror lay behind them. Life was still a struggle but they could see the promise of a future without fear.

“See you at Christmas”, they said jovially, and “get home safely”. The men slapped each other on the back and the women hugged and smiled broadly.

The kitchen heat had warmed the blood. My coat felt heavy and unnecessary, my hat and mittens itched. I wanted to take them off, stay here and climb the stairs to the cold attic and get into bed with Gisela.

“Kommt gut nach Haus”, Aunt Katie shouted after us from the open cottage door as we trudged back to the station. The night was dark, there was no street lighting. I clung to father, who held my hand. Afraid of the dark, afraid of the potholes waiting to trip me up, I stumbled along as fast as I could.

Nobody in the family was ever late for anything, setting out in good time was a virtue. Perhaps their generation had had punctuality and reliability drilled into them to the extent where it had become second nature.

We arrived at the tiny, single-storey brick-built station and the waiting room with its wooden benches with enough time to spare before departure, for me to study the signs over two doors in one side of the room once again. I was a good reader from an early age, but these signs defeated me. “HOMMESGENTLEMEN” and “DAMESLADIES” they said in capital letters. Each time I saw them I separated the syllables, saying them quietly to myself. “hom – mess – ghent – lem - men” and “dah-mess-lah-dees”.

When I asked mother what the words meant she said “they’re Klosetts; do you need to use them?”  “No thanks,” I said, but was no wiser than before. “Toilets?” Klosetts were called ‘Männer’ and ‘Frauen’ not these strange words which made no sense to me.

On the journey home the monotonous rumble of the train rocked me to sleep.  Father was still an invalid and not strong enough to carry me on to the connecting train at the market town and he certainly couldn’t carry me on the walk home from the station to our house in St. Toenis.

During the last half hour I made slow progress. My legs ached. Shivering with cold and tiredness, I stumbled along in the middle of the road, mother and father almost dragging me, both of them holding me by a hand.  “Not far now”, they said encouragingly, “home soon.” It had been a very long day.

A Family Reunion - All Saints’ Day - Part II

Aunt Katie’s welcome smile ushered us in. The black and white tiled hall of the cottage was unheated. We shed our coats, hats, scarves and gloves as  quickly as we could and  made for the kitchen-livingroom  where the round cast iron stove blazed fiercely. Grandfather was sitting in state on his sofa under the window; he didn’t get up for us, and we had to squeeze past the table in front of the sofa to shake his hand. I didn’t like to hug him, a peculiarly stale and dusty smell enveloped him, which offended my nose. Although we liked each other well enough, I was never his favourite grandchild; that honour belonged to my cousin Gisela, Aunt Katie’s daughter, who had lived with grandfather since the day she was born.

I loved Aunt Katie. Her smile lit up her whole face and her deep blue eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her kitchen was always cosy, and the large kettle on top of the black stove sang a sweet song of hot drinks to come. The aroma of a good thick soup tickled my nostrils. I was always hungry at Aunt Katie’s; mother hated that. She never stopped complaining about what she called my greediness in Aunt Katie’s kitchen and my lack of appetite at home.

“Let the child eat if she’s hungry,” Aunt Katie blustered in her forthright manner. “Food in other people’s houses is always tastier than food at home, that’s how it is. Everybody knows that.”

By and by Aunt Katie dished up and we all ate her nourishing soup and a piece of good country bread to mop up the last drop and wipe the bowl clean.

Soon other members of the family arrived and grandfather’s cottage began to feel very small. It was time to wrap up again and walk to the cemetery, which was a mile out of the village. We children were not excused the trek, honouring the dead was a duty we learned to perform early.

Once out of the village, a forbidding reddish brown brick wall rising to more than two metres loomed out of the mist. It was breached by equally tall wrought iron carriage gates which rarely opened. The only other entry into the nunnery and convent school, for that was what lay behind the wall, was a much smaller gate let into one wing of the carriage gates. To the villagers the nuns were mysterious creatures, who  never left the convent but allowed services to be held in their chapel on special occasions and, if you paid them, for funerals and weddings. No village child attended the convent school in those days. Cousin Gisela and her friends thought it a spooky, frightening place; they told each other gruesome stories about little girls being whipped and kept prisoner within the high walls. Whenever we visited grandfather, I refused to walk past the gates without holding on tightly to a grown-up, for fear of a hand reaching out and dragging me inside.

The convent was the last building we passed before we left the main road and took the turning towards the cemetery, an avenue of mighty horse chestnut trees, the candle decked branches a picture in spring, but now dark and bare, shiny brown conkers freed from their prickly wrappers sprinkled in the thick layer of dead leaves underfoot.

The cemetery itself was enclosed by low stone walls, with wrought iron gates, wide enough to allow entrance to a hearse, in the side facing the road. There were no other buildings, no chapel, no trees, just bare open fields in all directions; only the dead safely tucked up underground could escape the bitter East wind and its spiteful, bone-chilling whistle. I kept close to the larger adults, their bulk affording my skinny little frame a small measure of protection.

It was the custom in our family that Aunt Katie and her husband, my mother’s brother, my Uncle Peter, ordered wreaths and flowers in the village and that the others paid for their share on the day. Uncle Peter had only very recently returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in Russia, and his little barber shop barely earned him enough to feed his family. Grandfather, whose savings languished untouched, didn’t like to advance him the cost of the wreaths, which meant that the flower seller didn’t get his money until after All Souls Day.

Traditional grave decorations were bouquets and wreaths of asters and chrysanthemums, interwoven with ivy and holly and ferns and backed with fir twigs. The men had been carrying them and now they were fussing over their position on the graves. Mother’s family had three plots, all in a row, one large family grave reserved for couples and two narrower ones for single men and women, much like the large wooden sided double beds and the narrower cots in the bedrooms at home.

When each man was satisfied that his contribution had a prominent enough place on the graves,  the women lit everlasting candles, which burned from the afternoon of All Saints’ day until the morning of the day after All Souls. The candles were placed in small lanterns, heavy based to stop them toppling over in the wind, and set on flat stones, each of which denoted the final resting place of an ancestor or sibling. Great grandparents lay there, grandmother too, and uncles and aunts who had died young. There was room for grandfather and a few more awaiting their turn.

“The graves are looking good this year, the cemetery gardener has done well. " He always did, he was conscientious about performing his task. “Very orderly the way he’s raked the pebbles;  zigzags are so attractive."

If you owned a grave, you paid a small annual sum for general maintenance to the cemetery authorities.

“We must do something about the headstone, is it leaning to the right, do you think? And what about the moss, shouldn’t somebody clean it off?” There was always someone finding fault. Making a fuss made the complainant look concerned.


to be concluded tomorrow.

A Family Reunion - All Saints’ Day - Part I

In November the wide and fertile flatlands of the Northern Rhineland cower in the path of angry storms, which travel unimpeded for thousands of miles across the North European plains from as far away as the Urals, mercilessly sweeping a never-ending army of lowering clouds before them; when they arrive, trees in the woods huddle close together, bending their crowns and weeping raindrops into muddy puddles; October’s fireworks are dead and gone. Fallen leaves rot underfoot, the air is dank and in the lanes, along the banks of hidden brooks and by secretive ponds, in the copses and clearings in the woods, where timeless mosses grow deep and soft, the smell of mould is all pervasive.  Grey days lean heavily on the bony backs of black and white cows, listlessly standing in damp meadows, yearning for shelter, while white mists rise from the ground like shrouds abandoned by the long dead.

November wears a mourning band.

The feast of All Saints on the first of the month is followed by the feast day of All Souls, the day when tradition demands that we remember our dead. It is the day when families get together at the graveside of those they have lost.

In my childhood, we travelled to my mother’s home village;  Allerheiligen or All Saints was a solemn public holiday.  Early in the morning of the feast day, before daylight had fully woken, we stood out in the open on a draughty station platform, stamping our feet and rubbing mittened hands curled into fists to keep warm, clouds of breath visible in the morning chill. The station consisted of a wooden hut, where the stationmaster sheltered from the worst of the weather, and a pair of wooden benches for the convenience of passengers, one each on the down line and the up line. Here we waited on the edge of the down line for the train to transport us from St Toenis, the small village where we lived, to the sleepy little hamlet crouching among aspen lined streams and mist shrouded fields, where grandfather’s house stood. Muehlhausen was no more than one long street, a continuous row of houses lining it on both sides; occasionally a farmyard interrupted this line, leaving a broad strip of muddy, grassy verge free between it and the road. Wherever a break occurred, a ditch ran along the side of the road, nearly always half full of stagnant water. In winter the ditch froze over and children, their feet shod in clogs, skated upon the run of ice. Halfway along the village street stood a chapel dedicated to St Vitus. Every time we passed the tiny chapel, which was really more a shrine than a chapel, I expected to be smitten with St. Vitus’ Dance and start jerking uncontrollably. I had been warned not to get too near the Saint’s statue and certainly never to touch the icon or remove the flowers devout villagers had placed in his niche. Grown-ups always assumed children would do damage and needed dire warnings to stop them.

A long slow whistle pierced the gloom of the station platform, announcing the arrival of the smoke plumed train, the engine showing its displeasure at being forced to stop by hissing hot steam in all directions. We were usually the only people embarking; knots of people alighted, pulling their coats close about them as they stood for a moment on the platform; the men settling hats more firmly and women fussing with children’s shawls and woolen caps and securing their own scarves more tightly under their chins, before they started the cold walk down the Chaussee into the village and thence the cemetery, bound to perform the same offices for their dead as we were.

The stationmaster held aloft his red signal disk, and put the whistle to his lips. Doors slammed shut, a short blast on the whistle sent out a shrill warning and the disk slapped down. The locomotive hissed once more, the train chug-chugged into motion. The smoky plume renewed itself triumphantly above the carriages.

Black and white cows floating on deep cushions of pure white mists briefly looked up as the train drifted past and an occasional avenue of poplars marched into the distance. Farmhouses, embraced by barns on three sides, lay low, broad and solid among them, sheltered from the prevailing East wind by a stand of oak or beech.

Inside the stuffy carriage with its wooden seats you could smell the smoke snaking back from the engine; the fug and regular rat-tat-tat of the wheels induced a light doze. “Don’t fall asleep,” father chided me, “you know it takes you forever to shift yourself.” Father had to stay alert, it took less than an hour to reach the small market town where we had to change to a branch line which would take us to just one village away from the hamlet where mother’s family home stood. The train’s destination was Kaldenkirchen, a town on the Dutch border. Up to now it had been slow, with frequent stops at villages along the way, but once past the junction with the branch line, where we would have to change trains, it would gather speed and make for the border without further delay.

Although it was fully daylight now, I found it hard to alight into the cold, damp, air at our destination. The open road from the station to grandfather’s house was the part of the journey I liked the least; the wind blew across the fields, the mist clung in cold droplets to my nose and eyelashes, blurring my vision. I constantly wiped my sleeve across my face.



to be continued tomorrow

The Wonders of the WWW

or How to Spend a Profitable Afternoon. (It’s still raining)

What started me off I no longer know.  I remember I was idly looking for poetry by Wilhelm Busch, to enliven a meeting of the German Conversation Group next week.  Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) was a German humorist, poet, illustrator and painter. He published comic illustrated cautionary tales from 1859; the one most people know is the tale of Max Und Moritz, a Rascals’ History in Seven Tricks:

Ah, how oft we read or hear of

boys we almost stand in fear of.

For example, take these stories

of two youths, named Max and Moritz

. . . . . . .

Busch was a wise old bird and I enjoyed my trip down memory lane. How Busch led to Tannhauser I have no idea now, but Tannhauser was the next port of call. I am frequently surprised that the obscure subjects which interest me can be found on the internet at all;  I am duly grateful, nevertheless.

Wagner’s Opera Tannhauser is well-known; I wasn’t after Wagner, I was after the legend on which Wagner based his libretto. Tannhauser was a knight who,  based on his Bußlied, (song of atonement) became the subject of legend. The story makes Tannhäuser a knight and poet who found the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, and spent a year there worshipping the goddess. Not from afar, either. As these things go, he duly became aware of his sinful behaviour, left the Venusberg, asked Pope Urban for forgiveness but was told that forgiveness was as likely as it would be for the papal staff to burst into blossom. Which it promptly did, it’s a legend, after all. But Tannhauser had already gone back to ground with Venus and was never seen again.

Tannhauser wasn’t only a legendary figure, he was an active courtier at the court of Frederic II in the 13th century,as I found when I clicked on a learned text, the Codex Manesse, the single most comprehensive source of Middle High German Minnesang poetry. The manuscript is famous for its colourful full-page miniatures, one each for 137 minnesingers.The Codex was compiled in the first half of the 14th century and lists the names of Minnesingers of the mid 12th to early 14th century, Tannhauser among them. (How he became the stuff of legend is not immediately apparent. I expect somebody somewhere knows but I’d have to go on clicking for a lot longer to find out.) The Codex itself has had a very turbulent destiny, having changed ownership in many wars, disputes, a succession of rulers and even for filthy lucre at times. Now it’s back in its spiritual home of the University Library of Heidelberg.

The www is a wonderful tool, but rather lonely. Beloved and I used to do this sort of journey of exploration via books in the old days; ending up with piles of them, each reference leading to another, until books and time ran out. So, come suppertime, I told him of my researches and we instantly fell into the old habit, minus the pile of books. Wagner’s Tannhauser came first, Beloved being knowledgable about opera, but then we went off at a tangent, confusing Tannhauser with Lohengrin, who is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, is a version of the Knight of the Swan legend known from a variety of medieval sources. Wolfram was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry. (The miniature is taken from the Codex Manesse, as is the one of Tannhauser above.)

Naturally Elsa, the maiden whom Lohengrin rescued and who became his wife, asked after his origin, which made Lohengrin take up boat and swan and disappear back down the Rhine, never to return.

We hadn’t quite finished with our exploration; having been to Kleve (Cleves) and the Schwanenburg with the tower from which the legendary Elsa espied her knight in shining armour floating down the Rhine to rescue her, we briefly revisited our memories of the trip but soon got back to more ancient times, i.e, Anne of Cleves, the Flanders Mare, who became Henry VIII 4th wife from January to July 1540. They clearly didn’t hit it off and the marriage was speedily annulled. Holbein’s painting of her is said to be more flattering than realistic.

Having arrived at Henry VIII, about whom we know far too much to feel the slightest interest in exploring him further than in theatrical plays on the stage, we finally gave up.

I had a lovely time, we both did. I even enjoyed writing this post.

Candlemas

Giovanni Bellini, 1460-1464, Galleria Querini Stampalia, Venice

February has been the month of purification since Roman times;  Februalia was the Roman festival of ritual purification . The festival, which is basically one of Spring washing or cleaning (associated also with the raininess of this time of year) is old, and possibly of Sabine origin. According to Ovid, Februare as a Latin word which refers to means of purification derives from an earlier Etruscan word referring to purging.

The Roman month Februarius ("of Februa," whence the English February) is named for the Februa/Februatio festival.  (Excerpts from Wikipedia)

February was also the month when the housewife traditionally started her ‘spring cleaning’ of home and hearth;  the days lengthened and showed up dust and grime which remained invisible during the dark months. German folk wisdom  claims that: come New Year the day has grown by a rooster’s step, at Three Kings (Epiphany) by the leap of a deer and a whole hour by Candlemas. 

On the 2nd of February the Catholic church celebrates ‘St Mary’s Feast of the Candles’, officially the Feast of the Purification and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.  The aged Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’; on this day, therefore, lights and candles are blessed at a candle lit service. There are records which show that the custom of blessing the year’s supply of candles was already in existence in the tenth century in the area of the Lower Rhine. A normally dark church was transformed into a sea of light, surely an awe inspiring sight for the peasants of the time. After the service the candles were carried around the church in procession; great care was taken that the flames remained alight, because that meant the year would be a good one for bees.

Sacred and household candles were blessed alike; the beekeeper took his burning candle to his hives to thank the bees for providing him with the necessary wax and ask them for a good harvest of honey for the coming year;  the husband, as head of the household, took his candle and dribbled three drops, in the shape of a triangle, into the clothes of each member of the household, making the sign of the cross. This was to protect them from all evil, particularly witchcraft and magic. Another custom was for the father to dribble three drops on to a piece of bread, which he would give his children to eat and show to the animals in the stables.

The candlemas candle continued to be of great importance throughout the year; it was lit whenever danger to life and limb, the home, animals and property threatened. It was lit at the birth of new life and at the end of a life, both of which were natural events happening within the family home in those days.

Candlemas, like many saints' days, also provided the countryman with weather adages; farmers and shepherds preferred the day to be cold and rough:

If Candlemas Day bring snow and rain

Winter is gone, and won’t come again.

If Candlemas Day be clear and bright

Winter will have another flight.

Around 1700 a shepherd on the Lower Rhine was said to watch the weather on Candlemas morning with particular attention;  a proverb said that he’d rather see the wolf than the sun in the sheep pen. 

At least as early as the 1840s, German immigrants in Pennsylvania had introduced the tradition of weather prediction that was associated with the hedgehog (der Igel) in their homeland. Since there were no hedgehogs in the region, the Pennsylvania Germans adopted the indigenous woodchuck (a name derived from an Indian word), aka the groundhog. The town of Punxsutawney, some 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, has played up the custom over the years and managed to turn itself into the center of the annual Groundhog Day, particularly after the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Each year, people gather to see if a groundhog dubbed "Punxsutawney Phil" will see his shadow after he emerges from his burrow. If he does, the tradition says there will be six more weeks of winter. (Phil has a rather dismal 39% rate of accuracy for his predictions.)