GERMANY 2000: ULM, ROTHENBURG OB DE TAUBER, SPEYER

 December 20-21, 2000

We had taken the southern route near the Alps and the Austrian border on our way from Neuschwanstein to Salzburg, and on our way back into Germany we took the Autobahn from Salzburg to Ulm, bypassing Munich, which was a bit of a disappointment, but my mother said we were short on time and stopping in Munich would slow us down too much.  We also would have liked to stop in Dachau, which was just a few miles off our route, but again, my mother said no--there wasn't much to see.  

As far as I know, my mother never visited a Nazi concentration camp. If she did, it was one of the many things she didn't want to talk about.

Two of our most memorable experiences of the trip happened in Ulm, and I'll get to those later. Ulm is a city of about 126,000 situated on the Danube River. Founded in 850, it is noted primarily for two things: being the birthplace of Albert Einstein in 1879 and having a Gothic church with the tallest steeple in the world (530 feet).

Our hotel was right by the massive cathedral, which my mother said is the largest Protestant church building in the world, but it actually ranks 4th in the world and 2nd in Germany behind the Berlin Cathedral. Still, it is a massive 5,950 square meters (or over 64,000 square feet) inside, seats 2,000, and is, indeed, the tallest church (of any denomination) in the world.

As we approached out hotel, which was on the border of the cathedral plaza, we could see the magnificent spire enveloped in fog, the top rising out of the mist. It was a magical experience, one I will never forget. It was my first favorite experience in Ulm.

We arrived in time to walk around the Christmas market, which was set up around the perimeter of the cathedral. We were hungry, and I remember buying some wurst there and Bob putting condiments on it (ketchup, maybe?) and the man running the booth exclaiming indignantly to my mom that he shouldn't be doing that. What was wrong with him? We got a good laugh out of that.

The caption translates as: "Ulm Christmas market in front of the tallest church tower in the world."

Gotta love a good Gothic cathedral.

We bought tickets so that we could climb the 768 steps to the observation deck in the main spire.  What's 768 steps?

It turns out that it's quite a lot, especially when they are slippery, narrow stone steps that twist like a corkscrew. But hey, the views along the way (because we had to stop for the views, right?) were spectacular.

I think that must be the Danube in the righthand photo below. 

Cue the music, please:

Here we are, emerging after our long climb. We hardly look winded, right?

In addition to the view of the spire lacing its way through the fog the previous evening, our next most memorable experience was trying to leave town. Early in the morning, booths for a farmers' market had been set up on the street we had driven on to get to our hotel. When we tried to drive away from the hotel, our way was blocked by numerous vendors' booths. 

My indomitable mother just got out of the van and cheerfully started telling the customers to get out of the way and, if needed, the vendors to move their stalls enough for us to pass. They looked at our van with its French license plates in disgust. (There is no love lost between the Germans and the French.) Mom walked in front of our slowing rolling vehicle, moving people and obstacles out of the way while I am sure some of the words we heard being yelled at her were not "polite" public discourse. It was a relief to get away from the market and get Mom back in the car. But hey, what a memorable experience, right?

About 85 miles due north of Ulm is Rothenburg ob de Tauber (or "Red Fortress on the Tauber River), a Medieval walled city with about 11,000 residents and 11,000 tourists on any given day. There are several Rothenburgs in Germany, but this is the famous one. In the Middle Ages, before Berlin and Munich were even dreamed of, Rothenburg, with a population of 6,000, was the second-largest city in what is now Germany. 

It actually wasn't too crowded when we arrived on a weekday morning. We walked around for a while admiring the half-timbered houses, stone walls, and towers built in the 13th century. I wonder what the inhabitants of the city in those days would think of the motorized vehicles bumping along on the cobblestone streets in the 21st century. 

Sixteen allied planes dropped bombs on the city on March 31, 1945, killing 37 people and destroying 275 homes (32% of all houses in the city at the time), six public buildings, and over 2,000 feet of the wall. Compared to other cities, damage was minor. An American team was sent into the city to demand surrender within three hours or face total oblivion. The local military commander defied Hitler's orders to fight to the end, ceded the city, and spared it from destruction.

Rothenburg was the inspiration for the 1940 Walt Disney movie Pinocchio (even though the story takes place in Tuscany).

We spent some time walking on the 1.5-mile wall that encircles the city and exploring the castle.

Inside one of the guard towers:

The wall is the best preserved city wall in Europe.

Rothenburg is also supposed to be one of the best places in Germany for souvenir shopping. We bought an appliqued tablecloth (I love the German use of blue at Christmas) and a fisherman "smoker" that burns incense cones. Our youngest son had just discovered fishing and was the one who chose the one-of-a-kind smoker.

Besides its city walls and souvenir shopping, Rothenburg is famous for St. Jakobskirche (St. James's Church), which is home to what some believe is a drop of Christ's blood. It was built in stages between 1311 and 1484. The two towers are 181 feet and 189 feet tall.

I just learned that Jakobskirche is on the pilgrimage route to St. James Church in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, a place we visited and loved a few years ago.  

This triptych is part of the Holy Blood altarpiece, a masterful carving completed in 1505. These are my pretty poor photos.

This better photo (thank you, Wikipedia) reveals the amazing detail, including Judas in the center holding his purse of coins.

Photo attribution

Below the triptych is the reliquary cross with the drop of blood embedded in rock crystal.

Photo from here

Our final stop on our jaunt through Germany with my mother was Speyer, a city of 50,000 located on the west bank of the Rhine River and about an hour's drive from the French border. One of Germany's oldest cities, it was founded by the Romans, and the area was already populated by the first century CE.

We started off with a great lunch in a local hotel dining room . . .

. . . and then proceeded to the city's most famous landmark, the Speyer Cathedral. Construction began in 1030 and the first phase was consecrated in 1061, a remarkably short time by cathedral-building standards. Of course, the cathedral continued to grow over the years, and an expanded version was completed in 1106. Parts were rebuilt after fires and wars, but it has largely the same footprint it did in the 12th century. It is the largest extant Romanesque church in the world. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage list of culturally important sites. That something of this magnitude could have been conceived of, engineered, and constructed during the "the Dark Ages" is beyond my comprehension.

Speyer Cathedral is also known as the Kaiserdom, or Imperial Cathedral, because it is where Medieval German kings were crowned. My mother told us, "Some churches are built for God, and some are built for power. Speyer was definitely built for power." By that she meant that it was a symbol of the political power of the church in the area. It is notable that at least eight emperors and kings and several of their wives were entombed in the cathedral's crypt. 

I wrote in our scrapbook that this was Bob's favorite cathedral.

The polychrome arches remind me of the Moorish architecture of Northern Spain.

I took this photo of a bust of Edith Stein because I liked the quote beneath it: "He who seeks truth, seeks God, whether he knows it or not."  At that time I had no idea who Edith Stein was. Now I know that she was a brilliant German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism in 1922 at age 31. Although she was sent to a Carmelite monastery in the Netherlands in 1938 for her safety in light of the persecution of the Jews in Germany, she was arrested by the Gestapo in August 1942 and sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in the gas chambers a week later.

There is a garden area outside with a group of stone sculptures depicting the Garden of Gethsemane. It was added in the 19th century. The central figure is Jesus praying. His apostles are sleeping on the ground around him, and Roman soldiers are arriving at the base of the rocks.

Above the main entrance are sculptures of the four evangelists and Mary holding Jesus.

And right above that is this beautiful rose window.

In contrast to the soaring spire, we went down, down, down into the crypt, resting place for the rich and powerful rather than the humble and holy.

After our day at Speyer, we said good-bye to my mother and headed west to France. I can't remember why we didn't flip the trip--spending time in France first and then Christmas in Germany with Mom. It could be that she was headed back to the United States after our visit.