26 July 2011

Köln - Tuesday, 26 July 2011





















Before and after all that Gothic


I sleep in a bit, but am at breakfast by 9.  It's a typical German hotel breakfast, except that here, all there breads are hausgemacht, and so good.  So I have slice of bread packed with whole grains and nuts along with a little sausage and cheese.  Very good.  There are two young women from Canada there along with a couple from England.  When I come back into the room they are commenting on "how unfriendly" Americans are.  I object, and they ask me where I am from.  "San Francisco."  "Oh," they reply, "it's only the people on the East Coast who are rude and unfriendly."  I am at a loss for words.  When I tell the English couple that I've just come from Salisbury, they are delighted.  "This one (the Kölnischer Dom) is just too dark.  I don't like it" says the English woman.  Again, I am at a loss for words.

It's difficult to take in the Dom.  And I must admit, I shall need to warm up to it.  Perhaps it is the swarms of people, or all the construction (restoration) that is going on. I just don't seem to be able to settle in and engage this building.  I decide to go to the Schatzkammer and there find a great deal of delight, not only in seeing holy things, but also the ancient cellars that they have used, and the fine materials they have used in giving the tourist access.  I am especially appreciative that they have included modern pieces (crosiers, pectoral crosses, vestments, and eucharistic vessels) in their display.  The modern pieces are quite nice.

I walk across the south plaza and look back.  It is truly an amazing collection of stones.  I sit at a small cafe and have a Coke Light.  I need a pause.  I catch the profile of the Rathaus in the distance and make off for that, but am detoured by Groß Sankt Martinus.  Here in this wonderful Romanesque church are all the aspects of modern architecture that the Germans applied to ancient buildings as they rebuilt them after the War.  The clean space highlights the architectural mass.  I am quite taken.  (Although not everyone reacts to the space in the same way that I am.  An English family lets their young son - say 5 years or so - scream and yell, and jump up an the altar.  Not good.)  I drink it all in as a realization begins to develop in my mind.

I walk around the building trying to get a sense of its mass.  There is no one good aspect to this building, except, I guess, from the air.  I move on, crossing Heumarkt, noticing two towers that seem interesting.  To get to the one, I need to walk around a huge subway construction project, and when I get to the tower, realize that the church is gone.  Only the tower, and a door from a restoration after the war remains.  The door is marvelous - chased bronze with seven medallions, and a central image of the suffering Christ.  As I walk away, I realize that what remains is now a night club.  Sad.  But I need to get on to the next tower.  It means navigating this subway project, which in its own way is just as fascinating.  There is a complexity to what they are doing down there that just boggles my mind.






Retaining Wall at S. Maria in Kapitol

I am making my way to Sankt Maria im Kapitol, and come upon it from the real.  There is a delightful gothic entrance to the yard around the church, with figures in niches on the interior side.  There are architects walking around making comments about the building.  It is fun to listen in.  However, I make my own little discovery before going into the church.  The retaining wall next to the gothic gate displays a combination of dark stone with a lighter material, a pattern that I have seen before.  At Rudolf Schwartz's Sankt Anna Pilgerkirche in Düren (I think I may have to train over there before I leave) there is a similar combination of dark stone with light stone used in his tower for the church, built in the 1960s.  I will find another reference when I enter the church.





















Tower construction at Saint Anne's Düren

The church entrance is finally found and one enters through a restored cloister.  The plan is a nave with three apses acting as a sort of cloverleaf attached to the nave.  The altar is at the crossing and the eastern apse is divided at the crossing by a "bridge", somewhat like a rood screen, but surmounted by a lovely organ rather than an inhabited cross.  The building was heavily damaged during the war, and one can see the restorations.  I think that Rudolf Schwartz may have been involved in the reconstruction here as well.  There are a series of windows that are reminiscent of his chancel stonework in Düren.

Window at St. Maria im Kapitol    




Chancel wall (exterior) at St. Anne's Düren













On my way out, next to the gothic gateway I mentioned earlier, I find a plinth of stone with a poem engraved on it.  Upon closer inspection I see that it is a memorial to all who had died from AIDS.  I am moved, as a pause, and then make my way back to the world that is now.

By now I am hungry and make my way back to Heumarkt and sit down at an Italian place on the square, but decide that I shouldn't eat Italian food when I am in Germany.  So it's over to another place with a nice Schnitzle mit Waldpiltzenrahm.  I wonder when its a piltzen or a pfifferlinge?  I shall have to find out.  

From there I wend my way to the Rathaus, and on the way come across a huge archeological excavation where the new Jewish Musem is going to be built and where they have uncovered both medieval and Roman ruins.  At the Rathaus I am especially interested in an Italianate portico built by Wilhelm I, with a rather presumptuous inscription bounded by rondels with the profile of the Emperor Constantine.  It seems that the Holy Roman Empire wasn't quite dead - at least not in his mind.  This portico is attached to a gothic building which is connected to the gothic tower by a small modern extension with a wonderful balcony.



And here I will say it.  I am really quite partial to German architecture, especially their ecclesiastical and civic architecture.  They seem fearless in joining new to old.  The metalwork is especially fine, and can be seen everywhere, made useful and attractive in very ordinary situations.  Door knobs, emergency push bars, fire doors, ordinary doors.  It's all quite appealing.  There's not much post modernism here.

I take some time at the Roman-German museum, but perhaps I have seen too much.  MEGO - "my eyes glaze over" as my sisters would say.  I walk through the museum, and there is an interesting exhibit on the gardens at Amarna during the reign of Akhetaton.  There are artifacts, and they have reconstructed some of the floral necklaces and pectorals that were used at funerals.  There are also large models of the gardens themselves along with associated buildings.  Enjoyable.  Also enjoyable were the mosaics that had been recovered in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I need something sweet.  At an outdoor restaurant I have Vanilla Eis mit heißen Kirschen.  Delicious.

I head north by the front of the Dom, looking for my final (for today) Romanesque church - Sankt Andreas.  It's difficult to get a feel for the exterior since it is bound in on three sides by its cloister, and on another by a huge bank building.  It is a marvelous building.  It is a traditional cruciform building, with the altar at the crossing, and behind it a choir for the monks (Dominican).  The windows are all new and quite stunning.  Down in the crypt are the remains of Albertus Magnus, the great Doctor of the Church and the hopeful reconciler of Science and Religion.

I am, by now, quite tired.  It's time for the hotel.




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