Month: October 2018

A snap of the Neckar River as it flows through the Southern German town of Tübingen,

It‘s a very pretty sight – but of course during the Middle Ages it would have been a smelly cesspool as the filth and raw sewage spilled out into the river.

These are some trees in the Schwarzwald of Southern Germany, just outside of Freundenstadt:

I read two interesting things, but I don’t know if they are true.

First, there are no original trees in the Black Forest. All of the original trees have long, long been harvested and re-planted.

Second, the current trees of the Black Forest are no longer optimal for the current climate conditions, so land management experts in Germany are considering replacing the trees with different species that are better suited to warm temperatures.

I spotted this gargoyle in the historic Middle Ages Southern Germany village of Villingen-Schwenningen:

But then something amazing happened!  I realized I did not know the German version of this word, so I looked it up: der Wasserspeier.

OK, fair enough. Gargoyles were primarily designed to direct the flow of rainwater off of a building.

But here’s the amazing part: in English, the word gargoyle immediately invokes terrible emotions involving monsters and demons and people with ugly faces – whereas (I’m pretty sure) the word Wasserspeier does not. In fact, just about any native speaker would define gargoyle as monster – not as e.g. water spout.

I’ve often thought that the German word for battle, die Schlacht, is a good example of this in the opposite direction: battle connotes fight in English, but in German it connotes slaughter.

In earlier blog posts I’ve mentioned that some – but only some – Middle Age villages have cranes on their dormers, like this:

and like this:

The cranes are obviously for hauling loads to the top of the building.

But here’s the mystery: if these cranes are very useful, and indeed they appear to be, then why don’t more Middle Age villages have buildings with such gable-cranes?

I recently learned the answer from a tour guide in Villingen-Schwenningen: ground water!  In the Middle Ages it was preferred to store grain and food underground, in cellars.  But in villages where this was not possible, due to a high ground water table, it was stored on the highest (and architecturally, less useful) part of the building.  Therefore, if you spot a dormer crane it generally means high ground water!

Continuing the series, the historic walled village of Villingen-Schwenningen in South Germany has a stone sculpture just inside the wall:

I was on a guided tour of the historical South German village of Villingen-Schwenningen last week when I learned that the local town hero was a man named Romäus, their version of Paul Bunyan.  His image is painted on one of the tower gates of the village wall:

The story goes that he travelled to the neighboring village of Rottweil, stole the massive, multi-ton doors to their village, and walked all the way back to Villingen, carrying the doors with him, no less!

As a tribute to the many friendly townpeople I met, I used Microsoft Lens to unstretch him!

According to Wikipedia, just like Paul Bunyan there are many stories, but here’s the one on the wall:

 

If you go to the German city of Konstanz you’ll find some imposing statues along the Rhine River:

OK, so let’s have a quick look at who these guys were. Unbelievably, three of them are bishops that lived and died a long, long, long time ago.

Here is Bishop Berthold, who died in 1078:

Here is Bishop Gebhard, who died in 995:

And finally, here is Bishop Conrad, who died in 975:

But who is the fourth guy?  It’s Leopold, the Grand Duke of Baden, who died quite recently, in 1852:

Quite an interesting conundrum. Was this a vanity project commissioned by the Duke before he died, to have his statue next to these old guys?

Somebody must know – but not me!

I am not really sure if aquaforming is a word.  I’m talking about the terraforming of streams, like this example in Algäu, Germany, shows:

I think just about everyone has seen numerous examples of this in just about every country. But, if you stop to think about it, when / where / who decided to add this to any given stream?

In some (wonderful) cases, there is documentation nearby.  There are some incredible examples of this in Germany’s Schwarzwald, or Black Forest, where the villages undertook massive terraforming projects to project the villages against torrential flooding.

And if you go hiking in the forests around Stuttgart, you are likely to encounter dry man-made canals, empty brick-lined reservoirs, and stone bridges over nothing – all the features of a sophisticated water abatement system that sits quietly for most of the year, and really only comes into its own during a downpour.

I’ll post some snaps of these as time permits.