Schloß Neuschwanstein, Spring Break 3 of 10

I have to admit that it has been a long-held desire of mine to visit Neuschwanstein Castle ever since I saw a photograph of it in one of those kitschy Castles of Europe wall-calendars in my local bookshop. On my last day in Munich, I decided to make that dream come true. I took a train into the deep south of Bavaria, only a few miles from the Austrian border, to very feet of the Alp Mountains. In 1869, King Ludwig II of Bavaria decided that the mountains of his childhood home needed nothing less than a fairy-tale castle to fulfill his fanciful imagination. This palace, one of four he started to build, was designed first by an artist, not an architect. The exterior is a romantic exaggeration of the Romanesque style, with some Gothic influences, and was later to become the inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. The interior is dedicated to the world of Richard Wagner’s opera’s and as such is an incredible embodiment of the worlds of Tristan und Isolde, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Parsifal, and Lohengrin, all of which are old European legends and fairytales. Every surface is covered in vivid figures of swans, heraldic motifs, and scenes from the fairytales. The entire castle is beyond description. You are not allowed to take photos inside, but here you can see some of it. I have said it before, but the photos simply cannot capture how absolutely amazing this place is, and I couldn’t be more sincere in saying that no one should ever pass up a chance to visit this castle, should the opportunity present itself.

München doesn’t mean beer, it means Munich…Spring Break 2 of 10

The city of München (Munich), located in the southeastern German province of Bayern (Bavaria), is known worldwide, for better or worse, as the birthplace of Oktoberfest. Having decided to visit in March, however, I like to think that I experienced a different Munich, one entirely devoid of beer, though still culturally and gastronomically intoxicating. The main attraction in Munich is Marienplatz (Maria’s Plaza), where several of well-known landmarks are located. The Neues Rathaus (New Town Hall) is a wonderful neo-gothic building that looks a lot older than it is. It sits in the heart of Altes Stadt (Old Town) surrounded by designer boutiques and coffee shops situated in buildings whose dignity is now questionable in light of their new residents. Many important and beautiful churches are also in the vicinity. To the north one finds Odeonsplatz, which is the location of the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, when Nazi supportes attempted to take control of the city. Although I could find no written indication of where the beer hall actually stands, I am pretty sure it is now a San Francisco Coffee Company. Right next to Odeonsplatz is Residenz, the former home of the Dukes, Electors, and Kings of Bavaria, which is now used by museums and local government. Beyond Residentz is the Englischer Garten (English Garden), a sprawling city-park with several exotic buildings (such as a faux Greek temple) and a nice stream running through it. Overall, Munich was a great city to spend a few days in, but unless you are a crazed and perhaps deluded beer-aficionado, the city feels incredibly mono-focused on emphasizing what I am sure they believe tourists perceive to be their main selling point. This cycle only reinforces itself and indentified over the years and has now, more or less, taken on a life of its own. Munich has been around a lot longer than Oktoberfest, 635 years longer in fact, Oktoberfest dating only to 1810, and it would be nice if people recognized that quaint Bavaria has so much more to offer to the curious tourist who dares to say no to beer and instead drinks sparkling water with both lunch and dinner!

The New Town-hall

Odeonsplatz

In the English Gardens

Church of Our Lady

St. Peters Church

Maypole

A Mural in Residenz

The River Isar

From the museums

Düsseldorf-Heart of the Rhineland, Spring Break 1 of 10

This is the first of ten posts on my recent vacation to the Alps region of Europe, and I will be posting about one per day for the next week. Although my final destination was central Europe, I was fortunate enough to manage to find a flight to Munich with a 7-hour layover in Düsseldorf. I figured it would give me at least a few hours to explore the city, which is only a 20-minute train ride away from the airport. I am really glad I made it to Düsseldorf, though I feel bad that I wasn’t able to spend more time in the city. The city center in itself is fairly small, but I have read that the outskirts of the city as well as surrounding villages also have a lot of important historic sights. Nevertheless, I was able to see some of Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf sits on the Rhine River, an important trade route in Western Germany and Easter France for hundreds of years. The river flows all the way from the Swiss Alps until it joins the North Sea in the Netherlands, passing through countless cities involved in trade over the years. It was the first time I had seen the Rhine, and I was very excited about it.

Düsseldorf has a very impressive city park system, and I quite enjoyed strolling through several parks blooming with flowers, each with its own little lake and overly aggressive geese. Düsseldorf also has many interesting churches, most of them fairly new, as the city was bombed heavily by the British Royal Air Force during WWII. The rest of Altstadt (Old City) is mostly restaurants with street-side seating and many blocks of Europe’s finest designer shopping. It didn’t feel forced or overly commercial, like it often does in Eastern Europe. Instead, Düsseldorf’s best shopping district, Könginsalle, felt a lot like Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, except in Düsseldorf it has a moat down the middle. It was just enough to see for one day without feeling overwhelmed, though I do hope to return someday, especially to see some of the surrounding areas and to explore one of Europe’s most fertile river valleys, especially nearby Neander Valley, where in 1856 the very first Neanderthal skeleton known to modern anthropologists was discovered.

Padborg

Padborg is a very small town that lies immediately to the north of the Danish-German Border. It was here we visited a small concentration camp called Frøselv built during WWII to house Danish political prisoners who defied the German occupation of Denmark. Denmark has a unique history in regards to WWII, especially in its relationship to Germany at that time. In and of itself, Germany viewed Denmark rather ambivalently, as it was fairly small, and racially acceptable to the Nazi regime. However, strategically speaking, it was an important steppingstone to the German occupation of Norway. Norway was important to Germany because it offered access to controlling the North Sea, as well as proximity to the United Kingdom. Southern Norway is less than 300 miles from Scotland. Therefore on 9 April 1940, Germany launched ‘Operation Weserübong’ and invaded Denmark and Norway simultaneously. Less than six hours after German troops arrived in Denmark, King Christian X and the Danish Government officially surrendered with objection to the German Occupation. This is seen by many, especially those outside of Denmark, as a sign of either cowardice on the part of the Danes, or even worse as an indication of complacency with or support for Nazi Ideology. Nevertheless, most people in Denmark understand that it was the right decision to make. Denmark lost 16 soldiers in the few hours it resisted the German invasion, and had it continued it would have inevitably lost many more. The decision to “cooperate with objection” to the German occupation also insured the continued protection of Danish lives over the course of the war. The Danish people had managed to evacuate a majority of its Jewish population to neutral Sweden before the invasion. Additionally those five hundred or so Jews who were exported from Denmark to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp were never sent on to extermination camps. That being said, between 50 and 100 did perish during this period, predominantly but not exclusively of old age. The Danish government was also allowed to establish its own prison camp for Danish political dissidents and saboteurs. This was an attempt to ensure that Danish citizens were not deported to camps in Germany and Occupied Europe, where conditions were considerably worse. The camp was run by Germans, but funded by the Danish government. From what we learned while visiting the camp, it was much better than the camps elsewhere, but was still packed with several times its maximum occupancy towards the end of the war. Additionally, some prisoners were deported to German camps elsewhere. In all of Denmark 6,000 prisoners were held in concentration camps by the German government, and approximately 10% of them died or were executed during the process. This is one of the lowest mortality rates among Occupied Europe, and is generally understood to be a direct result of the Danish government’s decision not to resist the Germans.

From GoogleEarth

Photos of the Camp today

As you can see from the photos above, the camp itself is located inside of a small forest, and is made up of administrative buildings, barracks, and guard towers. We toured a museum in one of the barracks that documents life for the prisoners at the camp. We also heard from the Director of the museum, who explained the history and significance of the camp during WWII.

The Director also discussed the camp after the end of the war. It was converted by the Danish government into Fårhus Camp, and housed many of those who were convicted to prison sentences for collaborating with the Nazi’s during the war. This is one of the most controversial aspects of the camp, and is a very complicated issue, especially considering the relationship between Denmark and Germany in this area. Southern Jutland is a region that has historically been a part of to both Germany and Denmark, and is therefore a place where the two have mixed, and where the German minority has lived for generations. During the war however, many Germans living in Denmark felt a sense of allegiance to Germany, and many were sympathetic to Nazism. Many Danish citizens, including those considering themselves to be ethnically German, decided to collaborate with the Germans during the occupation. Many young men also joined the German army to fight the Soviets. However, when the war ended, the re-established Danish government passed retrospective laws that made collaboration with the Germans a crime. Many members of the German minority in Denmark, as well as other Danish citizens, were punished under these laws. Over all 40,000 people were arrested for suspicion of collaboration, most of whom were punished with under four years in prison (such as the one at Padborg). However 5,000 were released without charges, and 46 were executed. Many people felt that this law, especially in the respect that it acted retrospectively, in essence making certain actions illegal that were fully legal at the time of said action, amounts to nothing more than petty revenge on the part of the Danish government. This is a highly problematic part of the camps history, especially as so many members of the German minority in this region of Denmark felt as if they were unjustly treated after the war. The museum is currently working on an exhibition commemorating the Fårhus Prison, but the director clearly has strong feelings against it. He emphasized several times that those convicted were punished for collaborating with a terrorist government. It was also clear that as a very patriotic Dane, he was personally offended by any Danish citizen who he thought was working against his country.

The story of Denmark during WWII is one fraught with difficulties. On the one hand, Danes are proud that their decision to collaborate with the occupation (with objection) decreased the loss of life in Denmark, and they are especially proud that they were able to save so many of their Jewish citizens. However, those who did collaborate with the Germans, as the government did, were punished after the war. Danes also idolize the Danish Resistance Movement, which fought against the Germans once they had established control of Denmark. As our museum director contradictorily put it, “collaborating with the invasion saved our lives, but the resistance movement saved our honor.” Most Danes don’t know exactly what they feel about this part of their history. In general, they are a peace-loving nation; so finding a relatively peaceful resolution with Nazi Germany is an example of this ideal. At the same time, they believe the resistance movement had the right to fight the Germans, even though the King himself advised his people not to resist for fear of loss of Danish lives. And after the war, they took extraordinary steps to punish those, who as far as I can tell, were only following the example of the Danish government. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Nazi government perpetrated some of the greatest evils known to modern history. But it does beg the question; to what extent can one hold the ordinary German people responsible? To what extent were they blinded by nationalism, fear mongering, or simply overwhelming indoctrination? And how should the descendants of those people, the modern Germans living in Germany or abroad, feel about their past? How do they reconcile their love of country with the horrendous things that country has done over the course of history? In short, for how long are we responsible for the sins of our ancestors?

The Danish-German Border Region

This last weekend was my first study tour with DIS. Each core program has a short study tour and long study tour built into the curriculum. My class took our short tour to the Danish-Germans Border Region from Thursday to Saturday. My class is about cultural migration and identity with Europe, so we went to the border to learn about Danish minorities within Germany, and German minorities within Denmark. The border between these two nation-states has moved quite a bit over the years, so on each side of the border there are substantial portions of the population whose national identity does not correspond to where they live. This has caused some problems over the years, however now a lot is being done to promote cultural interaction, as well as to sustain these two small communities.

We started out in southern Denmark, in a town called Kolding. Here we visited a castle that was located on the historical border between Denmark and the Duchy of Schleswig. In the late middle ages, the county was officially part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but only because the Duke has pledge allegiance to the King of Denmark. This castle was built to remind the Duke that it was the king who had the power in the relationship.

Koldinghus Castle

A view of Kolding from the Castle Tower

Next, we drove to northern Germany, to the town of Schleswig (from which the Duchy gets its name.) We visited a Danish school called the A.P. Møller School. There is a whole system of Danish schools in Germany, which are funded by the Danish government, in order to provide the Danish community with a link to Denmark. Many believe that the Danish school system is superior to the German system, and for that reason, many parents choose to place their children in the Danish school system, instead of the German one. It is important to note that each person in this region is permitted to identify with either national community, and for that reason German parents can place their children in Danish schools. The German-Danish distinction is not based on race or ethnicity, or even necessarily language or culture. Each person much make a personal decision as to which nation they wish to identify with, and many chose a combination of the two.

The A.P. Møller School is a high school built about one year ago, and is probably the nicest high school I have ever seen. It was a donation from Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, the richest man in Denmark, and the heir to the Mærsk shipping company. The high school is rumored to have cost $100 Million US Dollars, and is designed by the same architectural firm that designed the Copenhagen Opera House (also a Mærsk donation). Here me met a scholar who has studied border regions in depth, and is also a social studies teacher at the school. He talked about the history of the region, as well as the issues regarding minority identity in border regions.

The Library

Assembly Hall

Schleswig Cathedral

From Schleswig, we made our way to Flensburg, Germany for the night. The next day we explored the town, and then got a lecture from another professor who is an historian and very well acquainted with the area.

He then took us to back to Denmark, to see Dybbøl Banke, the sight of the 1864 war between Denmark and Prussia that pushed the border to the north. We then went to in Sønderborg Denmark, where we had a night tour of the castle there, and then spent the night at a local hostel. The next day we had a lecture at the University of Southern Denmark about the socio-economic issues facing the Danish German Border Region. After that, we were on our way back to Copenhagen.

Overall, I would say it was a very good study tour. We learned a lot about history, politics, and culture of the border regions. We met some very interesting academics, and saw some amazing places. I actually was relieved to be back in Denmark, because linguistically I understand just a little more than I did when I was in Germany. Many of us found that we were actually starting to rely on our Danish skills when we were among German speakers. We also had to sort through Euros for the first time on this trip, as Denmark has not yet adopted the Euro. As a final thought, here is a picture of the breakfast we had in Flensburg Germany. We ate in a small café in the attic of a building just off the main walking street. It is owned by an elderly German woman and her husband, neither of whom spoke English or Danish. Nevertheless, between the students who spoke English, the professor who spoke Danish, and the bus-driver who spoke Swedish, we were all able to communicate and enjoy a wonderful meal together.