Thursday, January 26, 2012

A Real European Castle in Heidelberg


In order to make it look good, and that I wasn't really just in Frankfurt to see Eunji, I needed something else to do. It turned out that there was a little city near enough to Frankfurt that had a famous castle. This was Heidelberg. They also are apparently famous for chocolate. With a journey of about an hour or an hour and a half, depending on which kind of train is used, Heidelberg makes a great day trip out of Frankfurt.

It didn't hurt that, for a long time, I have wanted to visit an honest to goodness European castle. You know the kind. It sits up on a hilltop, imposing as it looms over some idyllic little town, with parapets and towers, a moat and drawbridge maybe, and that wall around it that you can't mistake for anything other than a castle wall. Here was my chance.

I booked a train ticket to Heidelberg and got on. The discount ticket that the guy in Frankfurt's main train station had got me set up with on my first day in town was turning out to be really useful. But because I had it, I didn't check out the buses or any other form of transportation. Maybe they were cheaper, and I just never went to find out. Maybe Germany could have been a bit cheaper than I was finding it. But I guess I will never know, at least not on this trip.

I had taken just a normal, milk-run sort of train to get to Heidelberg. And it stopped everywhere. It ended up taking almost two hours to get to Heidelberg. On the way back I had booked an ICE train (Inter-city express), and that was going to be much quicker, albeit somewhat more expensive.

When I arrived in Heidelberg, I headed out the main door and found the tourist information kiosk. Have I mentioned already how nice it is to find tourist information kiosks that are truly tourist information kiosks and offices, instead of tour operators masquerading as tourist information offices and then really trying to sell you something? Well, if I haven't mentioned it, it is really nice to find tourist information offices that are truly tourist information offices. And this was really friendly. When I was in Berlin, the people in the tourist information office weren't very nice, nor particularly helpful. I had to drag all the information out of them about things like discount passes and such. It was kind of annoying there.

But the girl I spoke with in Heidelberg was really nice and helpful. She also greeted me with a big smile that just shouted that she liked her job. I told her that I had heard that Heidelberg was a nice place to visit and she said that it certainly was. Then when I told her I didn't know much about what I should go and see there, she handed me a map and showed me exactly how to get to the old town, a nice bridge, and of course the castle. And I didn't have to drag anything out of her. (I went back later and told her that she had been so nice and that that was how tourist information offices should work. She was pleased.)

She was a bit surprised when I said that I wanted to walk to the old town, which she told me was about 45 minutes away on foot. But it was a nice day and she didn't try to dissuade me at all. She was just surprised.

Off I went and it did take about 45 minutes to get to the old part of Heidelberg. It was easy enough though. Not only were the tourist information girl's directions very good, she had also told me that most of the trams went to that area, so I just made sure I followed them. Ding, ding, ding!

The old town, although very restored and shiny and new-ish looking, still didn't convey much of the tackiness that other such places I have visited virtually dripped. (I remember a place in China called Lijiang. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List, but was almost destroyed by an earthquake. It was put back up, but it looked as though they had taken it out of a box and put where it belonged. And it was all tourist crap in most of that town. It was not a nice place.) This was a working area, with restaurants and shops and boutiques. But it wasn't tacky and it wasn't just tourist stuff. This was in spite of it being restored and put together in order to draw tourists to the city.

There were narrow, cobbled streets. There were those German-town looking buildings. Perhaps it's more Bavarian looking. I'm not sure, but it's something that one thinks of when one thinks of Germany and the Alps and towns there.


There were also lots of churches. They were hidden down narrow streets that opened into larger squares every now and then.















And at the end of the old town, I started having glimpses of the castle that hovered over it all.











I proceeded a bit farther and found myself looking up through a square that gave a good view of the entire castle. The sign placard in the square said this was unusual. Towns with castles didn't generally have good views of the castle from any of the squares in town. But this one did and it was a very nice view.

From the square it was just a matter of finding the funicular to go up to the castle. That wasn't too hard and I was quickly on my way up to the castle. There was a road that went right up to the castle and I could have walked, but the nice woman in the tourist information office told me that if I walked or took the funicular, it was going to cost the same. So I decided to ride up and walk down. Less work. And funiculars are cool, the way they go right up the side of a mountain. This one had a sign letting riders know the present grade was 27 % or something like that.








At the top, I headed into the castle and walked around. It's perched on the side of the mountain. (Ha! Ha! Hill would be a better description.) It overlooks the old town below. And it's quite nice. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go in. I had purchased the ticket to go into the see the courtyard only. There was another ticket available for a guided tour and this would have taken me into the castle interior. But I didn't know this until I was inside and it was too late. But then I would have probably been somewhat underwhelmed. How different can the interior of a castle be? There will be rooms for eating and sleeping and bathing and having parties, and getting ready to defend the territory. So it was okay. I had seen the inside of these sorts of places before. The details and such will change, but not the overall impression. And the courtyard area was quite interesting enough, thank you very much. Although part of the castle was undergoing restoration, the overall impression was still very imposing.

And the view over the old town was also very nice.












One thing that was included in the ticket to the castle was the pharmaceutical museum. Wow! You might be thinking to yourself right now. And, I had the exact same thought going my mind. Well, more like, “Yawn!” But it was part of the deal, so I went in. And it was actually rather fascinating. There was a presentation of the development of pharmacies and pharmacists. How, right from the beginning, there were the people who decided what an illness needed to be cured, and the people who gathered and prepared the cure. It started with the first conceptions of what caused illness (the four humours (blood, phelgm, yellow bile, and black bile), which were connected to the four elements (earth, water, air, and fire), and to the four cardinal directions. These all interacted to maintain health or, when there was some kind of imbalance, create ill health. There were magical interpretations of illness through the centuries, and divine ones as well. A lot of knowledge was kept in the Arab world while Europe was wallowing in the repressive Middle Ages. In fact, in something that I should have figured out before, the word Alchemy comes from the fusion of the Arab “Al-” and the Greek “chemy” which is the root for chemistry. (Many words in English are derived from the time when much western knowledge was being stored in the Arab world while the Church was stamping out anything scientific as contradictory to the religious world-view. In a particularly ironic one, think “alcohol.”)

From this simplistic view of illness and cure, the world passed to a more useful view of microscopic causes of illness, and chemical answers to those illnesses. But through it all, the pharmacists were plying their trade. Information panels explained the whole progression through time. And they were well done.

There were also lots of props showing what pharmacists have used over the centuries...











...as well as where they worked...


...and the tools they used to do the work. There were many examples of all of these in this little museum. I was glad I hadn't passed it up. It was definitely not a yawner.

After spending a good amount of time in the castle, I headed back down the hill and found the bridge that was famous in the town. It was quite a nice bridge as well, but it was nothing special. I did find a good juxtaposition of the bridge and the castle in the background from the other side of the river.

Then it was pretty much a wrap. I had seen the sites in Heidelberg. It was a nice little town, and I may visit it again someday. That is if I can get over how expensive Europe is. I stopped on my way back to the train station for a bite to eat. 15 dollars later, I was on my way. At least it was a very big lunch and I wasn't going to be needing much in the way of dinner.

I got back to the station and got on a train just as the rain was starting anew and headed back to Frankfurt. I now had a good extra reason to have visited Frankfurt. Success!

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Real Reason For Coming to Frankfurt


Upon returning to Frankfurt from Munich, I easily found a place to stay that was reasonably priced. The next day was for checking out the city. Now one could say there were plenty of reasons to come to Frankfurt.

There was Goethehaus, the house where the German philosopher was born and lived. The house was narrow, but very tall, with four floors.














Inside there was lots of old stuff. Cool stuff is a great reason to go visit a place like Frankfurt. There was the astronomical clock, which would have impressed my grandfather.














There was an old water pump, located in the kitchen. It's interesting to something inside the house that would normally be found outside.










There was old furniture, too. Not so much for me, but old furniture can be a draw for visiting somewhere.











And the old puppet theater that Goethe used for inspiration when he was a child was a great reason for a visit.










Nearby Goethehaus was another great reason to visit Frankfurt. The big church in the center of town was a very nice example of old churches.














Inside it was also very elaborate,...
















...with some kind of crypt inside.












Unfortunately, there is a fee to go up to the top, to the viewing area. But there is a shopping center near the church, Myzeil, where there is a view over the city that is almost as good as would be at the church. And it's free. So it's a great reason to visit Frankfurt. It would probably be greater at night with the lights of the city.






The river cutting through the city is very picturesque, and is yet another reason to visit Frankfurt.











There are also museums galore in Frankfurt, for those who like museums. I can especially vouch for the cinematic museum. It is quite a nice one.

But personally, the best reason to visit Frankfurt...
















Well, you decide if it's good enough.

Dachau


Aside from Auschwitz, Dachau is probably the next most synonymous place for the Holocaust. It was a concentration camp for the Nazis during the period leading up to and during the Second World War. It was the only camp that had a continuous existence from the time Hitler first took power through the end of the Nazi regime. And it is located right outside Munich, about 15 or 20 kilometers away, and a 30 minute suburban train and bus ride.

The Berlin Wall was interesting and another part of the whole recent story of Germany is the concentration camp system and the persecution of the Jews and other religious groups, among others. During my travels, I have visited lots of Second World War historical sites, and now it was time for ground zero, as it were.

The Dachau concentration camp site is open as a memorial to what happened, so that people can go and learn, and hopefully never let something like it happen again. (Although that has already failed, I would say. Cambodia had a brutal time of the extermination of people as well, and the world still chose to ignore it for a long time. Perhaps well will never truly learn.) It is a free site. All visitors are welcome to come and learn without having to pay an entrance fee. There are lots of information boards and things to see. But if one wants to learn about it all in a more structured way, there are two kinds of tour available. One is an audio tour. The other is a guided tour with an interpretive guide. This is available in many languages. And showing that they really believe that it's important for people to come and learn and understand, the cost of the guided tour is 3 Euros, or about 4 or 5 dollars. The audio guide is a bit more at 3.50 Euros. There are, of course, donation boxes all around for those who wish to make sure the work can continue.

Normally, I don't see much benefit in paying for a guided tour, usually because it's so blinking expensive, but this was different. And it was cheap enough to be within reach. So I made sure to arrive early enough to be able to take the guided tour at 11:00. (The other tour is at 1:00.) Because I was unsure how long it would take to get to the site, I left quite early and arrived at just after 10. This left me with quite a bit of time to just wander around for a bit to see things nearby. I didn't actually do much of that though, as it was chilly. And I have no real shoes. (I gave up wanting to cart them around sometime in Thailand, I think, and left them someplace along the way.) So I only have a pair of sandals and a few pairs of socks to keep my tootsies warm. With the tour being a lot of outside, I didn't want to make myself too cold to be able to pay proper attention, even though I suppose it would have given me a better understanding of the true conditions in the camp for those interned there.

So I stayed mostly in the information center and checked out the books in their shop, and waited. It looked for a long time as though I was going to be the only one on the tour. There were groups coming in, but they mostly had their own guides to take them through the site. Others were coming in singly and in small groups, but they were taking the audio guides and heading out.

Finally, a few people came in and signed up for the guided tour. I was glad for that. Shortly, our guide came and gathered us up. Suddenly there were about 15 people. Cool. Our guide's name was Claudia. She was of Italian-German roots, but had married a French Canadian. She was a rather international sort, and she told us that probably made it a bit easier for her to be a guide there. Many pure Germans still have difficulty with the whole notion that that evil came out of their midst. It doesn't really matter that they had nothing personally to do with it, they still feel embarrassed and ashamed and don't like to talk about that time. With Claudia's roots, she had an easier time of it, she said.

She took us to the entrance of the camp. She stopped us there to give us a brief overview of the site. It had originally been a munitions factory. It had supplied of the weapons for the First World War. When Germany lost that war, the stipulations of the Paris Accord severely limited the production of munitions in Germany. The Dachau factory was closed. There had been somewhere around 8000 workers there who suddenly unemployed. The Dachau region was devastated by that closing. Inflation soared. Things were pretty brutal for the Germans.

The world economic crisis of 1929 hurt even more. It was in this climate that a young Hitler came to the public's attention. He was seen as easily manipulated by the political elite and so he was promoted. On January 30, 1933, he was promoted to Chancellor of Germany. He was the man in charge. Thus began some quick moves to take control, limit the power of those who were from other parties, and to take and hide away those who would speak against Hitler, his policies and his government.

He was aided by two things. First, he was a master of public relations and saying what people wanted to hear. Second, in February of 1933 there was a fire that somehow involved the Reichstag in Berlin. Hitler used that fire to promote the idea of a threat to the government and public safety. He was able to suspend the rule of law and even the ability of other parties to exist and function. His moves following the Reichstag fire allowed him to basically establish a dictatorship, where he was the sole authority, and his party was the only valid one.

Now he needed a place to be able to imprison dangerous law breakers and subversive elements, in order that they couldn't wreak havoc on the public. Of course, this was just the propaganda that was used to legitimize the removal of elements that would oppose Hitler's government.

Using that line, the prison at Dachau was brought online. Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler's underlings, had come from the Dachau area and so he knew of the closing of the munitions plant. The buildings were still there, it was out of the public's eye, and there was a train line that went right up to the site. It could be easily converted to a detention facility. It was perfect for the purposes of Hitler and his government. With a bit of work, Dachau came online as a detention facility. Next to the prison camp, there was another large area that served as an SS headquarters and training camp. Thousands of prisoners were placed in the Dachau concentration camp, and thousands of young SS officers in training were placed in the training facility next to the camp.

Dachau was the first Nazi concentration camp and served as the model for all other concentration camps, of which there were thousands, throughout Germany and Europe.

However, Hitler still had a somewhat tenuous grasp on power for the time being. People had bought his story and had given him the power to make these sweeping changes, but should he be seen to be too brutal and not serving the interests of the public who had elected him, he could easily lose that power and be removed. So he had to be careful about how the Dachau camp was portrayed to the public. There was a lot of propaganda involved in how the camp was presented. And it began at the door.

The camp was ostensibly a labour camp, with the rehabilitation of its inmates as its goal. That was the message that was always being presented. It was certainly presented to the incoming prisoners, to keep them passive until they were under control. But it was also for the media and the watching public. It began at the gates, where the entrance gate had the slogan, “Work will set you free,” in German.











Inside the gates, the prisoners were taken to the processing area. They were brought inside and their particulars were noted in files. Photos were taken. Then they were taken to the next stage, the issuance of prison garb. The new prisoners were taken to a room where they had to disrobe. Then they were showered and the clothes they would be wearing as prisoners were given to them. Nowadays, this would mean some kind of fitting to make sure they were appropriate, but the Nazis were not concerned with making sure prisoners were actually comfortable. And as time went on, it was clear they were interested in exactly the opposite. Claudia read us an excerpt from the hidden diary of one of the inmates. He had been the last of his particular group of incoming prisoners to get finished with the shower process and claim his prison duds. As a result, he did not get anything that fit. All his clothes save on shoe, from his description, seemed to be too small. But that was what he got.

Once the inmates were processed and taken into the system, daily life began as a prisoner. And just who were these prisoners? There were, according to those who had studied the progression of the Hitler years in Germany, three distinct phases of the concentration camps in general, and of Dachau in particular. Each phase had its own characteristics in terms of prisoners and of life expectancy of the inmates. The first phase, at the beginning of Dachau's existence, was as a prison mainly for political opponents and those who spoke against the government. There were Jews and those who later come to be horribly persecuted by the Nazis, but for this first phase, from 1933 to 1938, the majority were political prisoners, and mainly Germans and Austrians. Dachau was also the propaganda concentration/work camp. As such, appearances needed to be kept up to a certain extent. Thus, for these years, the prisoners were better treated than what comes to mind when thinking of the true concentration camps of the Nazis.

There were clothes for each prisoner. In the barracks where the prisoners slept, there was separate bed for each inmate. They had food every day and showers that had hot water. Heat was available in the camp. And all of this was available for show to the visiting public and media who had heard awful stories about the punishments meted out to the opponents of the regime. And initially, the opponents who saw what was presented at Dachau were convinced and retracted their criticisms.

But the inmates were ordinary Germans who had often done nothing wrong, in the eyes of those of us who have grown up free and with the freedom to express ourselves without fear. Of course, such freedom of expression was the exact thing that Hitler couldn't allow, as dissidents could sway the opinions of the public against him and end his power. So these people were the ones who were imprisoned. Priests who preached against the Nazis were brought to Dachau. After one assassination attempt on Hitler failed, one priest had had the temerity to suggest that had the assassin succeeded, the suffering of thousands would have been ended or prevented. He was reported by someone who believed in Hitler, and he was incarcerated. Businessmen who didn't fully support the government with contributions were incarcerated. Anyone who spoke against the regime was imprisoned. Slowly, opposition was stamped out and all that was left were those who followed, blindly or not.

Behind the propagandist facade, the reality was somewhat different. The rules in the camp were very strict and absolute. Abrogating any of the rules meant often brutal punishment, being beaten, or hung by the wrists with one's hands behind the back for an hour or more. And for particularly strong offenders, they could be removed from the general population to the special barracks behind the intake center.

In the special barracks, there were sensory deprivation cells, dark cells, and standing cells. A prisoner might find himself in a dark cell for days on end with no light and no way to tell what time it was. A particularly intractable prisoner might find himself standing in a small walled area not large enough to sit or lay down in. They would be left there for three or more days. The clergy who offended the regime were all placed in this special barracks. They were in special cells in the special population and were even specially treated. They had the ability even to worship according to their faith. On the surface it seemed to be very humane. However, given that other prisoners were mistreated, this only served to make others hate them. Should Hitler have prevailed, he would have had people on his side hating all those who served organized religion.

The “regular” prisoners all lived in the general quarter barracks. These were where they had their own bunks, separate from others. In the beginning, there were blankets for each. They even had shelves for sundry possessions they might have been allowed to keep.

The regular prisoners occupied the 34 barracks buildings that were built off the muster yard. They were built over time as the camp expanded to accommodate the ever-increasing number of prisoners that were being sent to Dachau. (The barracks were taken down in the time after the war, and only the plots where they were located remain today.)


But things were still not as serene as the propaganda was suggesting. The slightest deviation from the rules would leave prisoners punished. And even in the regular day to day routine, there was cruelty. Three times a day, the prisoners of the camp had to meet in the muster area to be counted. They were in the yard for an hour each time, once in the morning, one time at noon, and a final time in the evening. Rain or shine, summer, winter, every day, they met. And they had to stand at attention for that hour. They had no more clothes and over time the clothes they did have became worn and threadbare. It was particularly harsh during the winter roll calls.

In addition, as it was a labour camp, the prisoners had to work. Much of the time, the work was meaningless. For instance, there was a gravel quarry associated with the camp. There were times when gravel was needed, so it was collected and sent out of the camp by the prisoners. However, a lot of the time they simply shovelled gravel from a pile on one side to a pile on the other side. Then they shovelled it back. Many tasks in the camp were like that.

And because Dachau concentration camp was located next to the SS training facility, there were other hazards to the existence of the prisoners as well. The young SS officers were trained to hate and to kill. They were trained to brutalize. And they needed to practice. The prisoners in Dachau were ideal for that purpose. Savage beatings were given. Other punishments were meted out by the SS trainees in order to prove their training.

Over time, the conditions in the camp, the malnutrition, the cold, the encroachment of disease, and the mistreatment took their toll. Many prisoners died. Of the 200 thousand plus prisoners who had come to the camp, more than 43 thousand died. They had to be disposed of.

At the end of the camp, actually on the grounds of the SS training facility, a small crematorium was located. This was added to later (as the number of dead outstripped the capacity of the small crematorium), with a much larger crematorium facility that included an extermination facility as well. The dead were brought and cremated and their ashes were buried nearby. In actuality, for reasons that nobody actually knows, the extermination facility was never used for more than some trials. It never became used as a functioning entity connected with Dachau. When the time came that the Nazis were incarcerating more Jews and other religious prisoners in Dachau, and they were beginning their “Final Solution” the inmates were shipped off to other facilities for extermination.


Claudia brought us there and explained the functioning of the facility and then let us walk through without any further questions inside, out of deference to the sombre air about the crematorium.

There were two other phases to the functioning of the Dachau facility that I mentioned but didn't explain. The first was the time before the war, when Hitler was eliminating opposition and consolidating his power and position.

The second phase was with the beginning of the aggression of Germany and into the first stages of the war. This was when Hitler began his campaign of persecution against the Jews. As a result, the number of political prisoners, which had been the majority, fell and more Jews and others were incarcerated. This marked a change in how the prisoners were treated. It also began the time when survival rates became worse for prisoners. Hitler wanted to eradicate the Jews. They began to be killed. In addition, their living conditions worsened. The barracks went from single beds with dividers, to common cots. Overcrowding began to be the norm. The punishments were meted out more regularly and with more ferocity. More inmates died. Hitler wanted Russia and viewed the Russians as sub-humans. Prisoners captured in Russia often weren't even logged in as prisoners. They were taken out and shot or killed in other ways.


This was the situation for the first part of the war, until 1943 or so. But then the tide began to turn. The Allies began to beat back the German advance. And in the last stages of the war, two things were at work. One was that Hitler and Himmler didn't want any prisoners to survive to be liberated by the Allies. In addition, they began to realize that just taking the Jews out and exterminating them wasn't the best strategy any longer. They needed able-bodied workers to get jobs done. So they made the inmates work. And they literally worked them to death. When one dropped dead from exhaustion and malnutrition, he or she was replaced by a new prisoner.

Prisoners were transported from the outer regions of German controlled territories to the inner and most protected spots, of which Dachau was one. The overcrowding became severe, adding to the conditions that beat down the prisoners and eventually killed them. Thousands died in the last stages of the war before the Americans came and liberated the camp in April of 1945. And they still died after that while waiting to go home or at least to somewhere else. Malnutrition and mistreatment had piled up and there were those who couldn't hold on just a little bit longer.

But, the Allies did arrive. And they did liberate the camp. Many of the SS were rounded up and imprisoned themselves, although most never faced any punishment. The camp for a time was turned into a refugee camp, but the survivors of the concentration camp resisted that. They wanted a memorial. And many of the Germans wanted the camp eradicated from existence, to put that chapter of their history into the past and hidden. Many of the buildings of the camp were razed over time and only the presence of the American army, who had occupied some of the buildings to house its operations saved any buildings at all.

After the liberation of the camp, sometimes years later, different faiths set up memorials and churches to help people deal with what happened there as well as providing a new way to look at the area.  Instead of a place of death that many sought to hide and destroy, the churches and memorials acted to change it into a place to remember, a place to show so that something like that could not happen again.  These places are located at the end of the camp, right near the crematoriums.  They are fitting places for renewal.




After the years of terror and horror, now the camp is clean and somewhat sterile. There is a lot of information about what happened there, and some of the buildings remain. But the horror is gone. It is a nice memorial to the victims of the site, but I don't know if it can really serve to connect the visitor to what happened.

I have visited the sites of horror in Cambodia. They have it on display. In Phnom Penh, and other places where people were killed, they have dug up bones and have them displayed, even though it must pain some who were there and lived through it. I think they do it so that nobody will ever forget, so that nobody will ever be able to say, “Nope, didn't happen.”

In Dachau, I knew it had happened there, but the evidence was gone for the most part. There were photos around, but it would be possible to wonder if it had really happened there. It's a bit too clean. And that's a shame. Because if we ever forget that it did happen once, there, we might hide our heads in the sand in the future and it could happen again.