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Updated November, 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The next town of any size east of Wolfsburg is Haldensleben, and there we made our first stop after leaving VW-city. This town of about 20,000 people has a long history, going back to the 10th century, and because of its position, it was a pawn in the often-troubled relationship between the Kingdom of Westphalia and the Duchy of Prussia. Today, it does not offer much to attract the casual tourist (although it does have a good Greek restaurant, in "Platon"), but just across the canal is the Haldenslebener Forst, the Haldensleben Forest, which has a very large assemblage of neolithic graves.
We managed to find several of these. Some of them are well sign-posted, but others are overgrown with wild blackberries and hard to locate. A better map would have helped, but lacking one, we photographed an information sign and used that. |
The Marienkirche, Haldensleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Covered Hopper Cars from the Czech Railroad | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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We also managed an excellent lunch at Die alte Ziegelei, one of the small restaurants that abound in the German woods.
Barbara's family is partly German, and it is a pleasing thought that some of these monuments might have been built by, or perhaps for, her remote ancestors. There is certainly a continuum of neolithic sites all over Northern Europe; we found them in Drenthe, in the Netherlands, on Rügen, and here in Haldensleben, and some in the North of Scotland, although the cairns there are somewhat different in structure. |
Well-Cleared Grave | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| There is a slightly spooky sense of hallowedness about these places. Forests in Germany are taken very seriously, and are about always used for many purposes. There will be marked trails, some local, some running for a hundred miles or more, there will be areas set aside and replanted in pulpwood, and there will be areas where the old-growth timber is carefully harvested. |
Barbara Taking a Closer Look | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The only areas where the public is shut out are areas recently replanted, where the seedlings need a little extra break.
The grave sites are peaceful oases, enjoying a matter-of-fact acceptance in the midst of all this life. |
Die alte Ziegelei - The Old Tileworks Restaurant | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Inside a Large Chamber (BNP Photo) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Lichens on Stone (BNP Photo) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Doorway | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Granite Boulders | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The transient quay for Haldensleben is on the south bank of the Mittelland Canal, and that bank also has two pleasant farm villages, Alt-Haldensleben and Hundisburg. In Alt-Haldensleben, we found a bakery an easy bike ride away, which made our stay more pleasant; it is a rare town in Germany where one cannot buy fresh brötchen, crusty rolls, in the morning for breakfast. Alt-H has some nice 17th- and 18th-century buildings, but Hundisburg has an elegant castle-turned-baroque-palace, that is well "worth a detour," in the Michelin phrase.
This whole area was (and is) known for brick and tile manufacture, as the local clay is somehow very suitable. In Hundisburg, there is an old tileworks that was founded in the 1880s and closed after the Reunification of Germany, only to reopen as a "Technical Monument;" It still produces tiles of various shapes, but also functions as a museum of tile-making technology. When I arrived, a group of primary schoolers was being shown the ropes and then given a dollop of clay each to make something out of. At the works, one can follow the tile-making process from digging the clay (their own mini-railroad runs from the clay pit to the mixing shed) to the extrusion of various shapes and firing the final tiles. Altogether an interesting and complex process. |
Gate Tower, Haldensleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Berthed just ahead of us on the Haldensleben quay we found Jörn, an inland ship of 135 meters, coupled to an 80-meter push-barge. Like many long-haul trucks in the U.S., and like most German inland ships, she is 'owner operated,' in this case by Hans and his wife Gisela (they do employ a deck-hand as well), who come from a long line of ship-owner captains. Next year they may sell the pushed barge and will then not need the deck-hand.
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Gate and Armory, Haldensleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alt-Haldensleben | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hundisburg Palace | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| They were touching up the paint while waiting to load a cargo of salt (salt is still an important product of this area) in Haldensleben and take it west, the whole length of the Mittellandkanal and all the way up the Rhine to Mulhouse, in France, via the Dortmund-Ems and Rhein-Herne Canals. The ship has made them a good living, but Hans is the last captain of his family. Their daughter is a lawyer and their son Jörn, whom we also met, is a student of Marine Business at the technical university. |
Farmyard, Alt-Haldesleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Meeting them made clear (if we had any doubt) the importance of the Mittellandkanal as a freight artery, not just for Germany but for all of Europe. We saw an endless procession of tank ships carrying oil from Hamburg to Berlin and the East, and we saw ships headed west with huge loads of Silesian coal for German power plants, or great coils of steel wire from the rolling mills around Brandenburg. |
The Former Cistercian Monastery, Alt-Haldensleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Entrance to the PalaceYard, Hundisburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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In Haldensleben, we were again in the former DDR (the German Democratic Republic, East Germany). Actually, the former border crossing, where countless ships have had to stop and show their papers, is in a small village called Ruhen, just east of Wolfsburg, where one evening we had a good dinner at the Greek/Italian taverna on the quay.
We again saw the difference in crumbling infrastructure, and also saw on the canal more older boats somewhat less well maintained than a ship like Jörn. |
Looking Over the Town from the Palace, Hundisburg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| East of Haldensleben, we had good luck in not having to wait for a convoy through the long aquaduct that carries the canal over the Elbe River, but we did have to wait a while for the enormous lock at Hohenwarthe that drops us the 18.6 meters to the Elbe-Havel Canal. There were several other small craft waiting, and one of them pushed in front of us as we were entering the lock, rather rudely, we thought, and even dangerously. |
Hundisburg Palace, From the 17th-Century Garden | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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These big modern locks are very sophisticated, and have large basins next to the actual lock chambers, so the water is pumped from lock chamber to a basin and vice versa, raising and lowering the level with essentially no loss of water.
The eastern continuation of the Mittelland Canal, the Elbe-Havel Canal, is narrower and shallower than the Mittelland Canal (East German infrastructure again), but it is now being widened and deepened, and we had to proceed very slowly through some parts, dodging dredges and their various support vessels. |
The Palace Garden Gate | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Romanesque Church Tower at Nordhusen - All that is Left of a 13th-Century Town | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Although I do not know a lot about the middle of Germany, I cannot remember a time when I had never heard of the Magdeburg Hemispheres. These hollow copper hemispheres were designed by the scientist Otto von Guericke at the moment when the concepts of atmospheric pressure and vacuum were quite new. He sealed the rims of the hemispheres together, used his new vacuum pump to suck the air out, and showed that two teams of cart horses could not pull them apart, a demonstration of atmospheric pressure that got the world's attention. |
Remnant of a 19th-Century Water-Powered Mill | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Old Tileworks, Hundisburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The original hemispheres are in a museum, I think in Munich, so they would not be on view, but we thought there might be something else to see in Magdeburg, a very old city.
With this in mind, we bought round-trip tickets in Burg for the short train ride and studied our guidebooks to see what we should see in Magdeburg. From the railroad station, one must negotiate several blocks of the most boring Stalinist post-war architecture imaginable, but is is not long before one sees the towers of the cathedral, and the prospects improve. |
One Chamber of the Tile Kiln | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Captains (BNP Photo) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Magdeburg ia a very old city, founded by Charlemagne and a favorite of Otto I, the first in the long line of German Holy Roman Emperors, who is buried in its cathedral, as is his wife. Like any old city of the German North, Magdeburg was a member of the Hanse from the 13th century on, and grew rich by virtue of its control of the vital grain trade on the Elbe.
It was also very early the seat of an archdiocese, and the tensions between the archbishop and the increasingly rich merchants may be part of the reason why the city where Martin Luther attended grammar school became an early center of the reformation. |
Jörn (BNP Photo) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Construction of the present cathedral was started in 1209, after a previous edifice, itself built on the foundations of the 10th-century Benedictine monastery of St. Maurice, founded (I think) by Henry the Fowler, had burned down, and took some 300 years to finish. Because of the time span, the design has both Romanesque and Gothic elements, sometimes at odds with each other. |
We Saw Nordwind Many Times | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Moored at Haldensleben | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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When the cathedral was considered open, in the mid-14th-century, it was formally dedicated to St. Maurice, like the abbey, but also to St. Catherine.
Over the years, Magdeburg has been heavily fortified, first as a bulwark against the eastern Slavic and Magyar tribes, and later as a western strategic strongpoint of Prussia.
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An Old Push-Tug from Berlin (BNP Photo) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Moored at the Long Customs Quay, Ruhen | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Magdeburg is such a thriving city that one is surprised that it was sacked twice in its history. As a center of the Reformation, it, like many other German cities, was besieged and taken by Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, in the Thirty Years' War; Tilly killed most of the inhabitants and burned the city. As a center of German industry, it was heavily bombed by the RAF in World War II,with one raid, in January, 1945, destroying most of the city once again. |
Waiting With Algarve for the Hohenwarthe Lock | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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In the Hohenwarthe Lock Chamber | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| As we came out of the Magdeburg station and began to get our bearings, we were quite surprised to find a memorial to the many prisoners, principally Jews, who were shipped through that station to the death camps in the East. There were such transports from just about every railroad station in Europe, of course, but only at Magdeburg did we find such a memorial, evidence of a determination not to forget. |
Derelict Factory - Haldensleben | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| As we found our way to the Cathedral, we also discovered that the grassy area surrounding the Cathedral and the Art Museum has been turned into a sculpture park, with a strong theme of peace and rueful acknowledgment of suffering. We particularly liked the Ehrenmal, by Ernst Barlach, and the Gustav Seitz statue of Käthe Kollwitz, herself the pre-eminent sculptor of the power of love over and through disaster and starvation. The Cathedral and diocesan buildings were used by the Nazi regime to torture dissidents, so the setting is particularly poignant. |
Street Scene - Burg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Main Street - Burg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Interestingly, my mind had changed the title of the Barlach sculpture to Mahnmal, a word that is difficult to translate into English. Mal in German is a monument, and mahnen means to warn but also to remind, so my mind made the sculpture into a memorial monument that is also a warning for the future, something not entirely inappropriate. |
Former Railroad Station - Burg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Former Monastery - Magdeburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| We were astonished to come around a corner and run into the "Green Citadel," a wonderfully crazy apartment complex with stores on the street level. The Hundertwasser building owes something to Gaudi, and lives, ornate and leaning, beside the different excesses in ornamentation of the late gothic and baroque eras, and shines an ironic light on both. |
Cathedral Towers - Magdeburg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Käthe Kollwitz Statue by Gustav Seitz in Front of the Art Museum - Magdeburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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The "Green Citadel," a Modern Multi-Use Building - Magdeburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| We had a pleasant sandwich and a glass of wine at a sidewalk café and enjoyed watching a three-generation family party, the young-ish couple in the middle being equally tender with the young children and grandma in her walker. The sight made us feel very optimistic about the world. |
St. Sebastian Church - Magdeburg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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We were glad we maade the effort to travel to Magdeburg, and when we stood on the former fortifications above the Elbe River, we were glad we had come by train and not by boat, for the river water was low and fast-moving, with "haystacks," riffles caused by rocks just below the surface, visible in several places.
Happy and refreshed, we caught a late-afternoon train back to Burg and home. |
Cathedral Gargoyles - Magdeburg | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Parish Offices - Magdeburg | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Ernst Barlach - Ehrenmal
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| St Maurice - Magdeburg
| Remnants of the Early Fortifications
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| Johanniskirche - Magdeburg
| Provincial Office Buildings - Magdeburg | |||||||||||||||