It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I'll be honest with you: when I left the United States, I dreaded Christmas.  That's not exactly a unique feeling for a lot of people these days, I realize, but I really dreaded it.  It was an excessively stressful time of year.  And my complaints are just as unimaginative: the excessive commercialization, the obnoxious constant stream of carols, the traffic, the inevitable lack of funds...Christmas had lost a lot of its magic for me as an adult.  

But my first Christmas in Germany changed that, because in Germany - and indeed, much of Europe, the dreary weather, constant lack of sunshine, all of that vanishes thanks to the Christmas Markets, or Weinachtsmarkten.  And why not?  For a month in the bigger cities, and at least for a couple days in even the smallest villages, everything is transformed.  Adorable huts selling ornaments, candles, and crafts spring up.  The smells of sizzling wurst, roast chestnuts, and spiced almonds fill the air.  Oh, and did I forget to mention Glühwein?

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Stuttgart's Alte Schloss at Christmas

It seems silly to complain about commercialization while celebrating what is a market, where one goes to spend money, but there's something different about the European Christmas feeling.  It's not that you don't hear carols on the radio, or have sales in the malls, because that's inescapable, but the cozy feeling you get admiring the booth decorations while warming up with a beautifully decorated mug of glühwein or cider, chatting with friends and family in the cold but bustling night is something really special.

Vin Chaud is just Gluhwein by another name!

Stuttgart's Christmas market starts on November 27th, and runs every day until December 23rd.  Sadly, I'll have to suspend my regular tours of Stuttgart during this time, as the market takes up most of the route of my tour through the Mitte, and it's just crowded and narrow to navigate a group through.  I'll still be available for tours during weekday mornings, however, when crowds are more manageable.  It's a great idea for an activity if friends and family are visiting this holiday season, and I'm available on both the 24th and 25th (when most everything else will be shut down).

Esslingen's amazing Christmas Market

The exciting news is that I am starting my new tour of Esslingen, but only as a private tour reserved in advance.  Regularly scheduled public tours will begin right after Christmas.  You can reserve by contacting me or by sending me a message on Facebook!

In the meantime, you can keep up with my own travels through the regional Christmas Markets by watching this blog, or following me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter!  Have a great holiday season!  

The Holy Roman Empire and YOUR Travels!

This is essentially part two of "Why You Should Care About the Holy Roman Empire" - in which I outlined how the HRE began.  But now I'm going to talk to why it matters to you, the expat or tourist in Germany.  But first, a (brief) continuation of the history.

 Within the HRE, there were countless kingdoms, duchies (lands ruled by dukes), counties (lands ruled by counts), and various tracts of land owned directly by the church or the Empire itself.  Kings, dukes, and counts often chafed at the power of the Emperors and many wars were fought as a result.  (For Games of Thrones fans, think of the Emperor as being the guy who sits on the Iron Throne - and the various kings and dukes as being like the Starks of Winterfell in rebellion against them).  Control of the empire passed through several different families in the early centuries, including local Swabians like the Hohenstaufen dynasty.  By 1450, however, the Hapsburg family had gained control of the Empire and didn't relinquish it until Napoleon put an end to the HRE entirely in the early 19th century (which then made the Hapsburgs "only" in charge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)

Enough with the history, though.  Why does this matter to you?  Because of Free Imperial Cities.  Here's my equation for travelers in Germany: Imperial city + economic decline in the 17th century - Allied bombing in WWII = Great place to visit!

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Like I mentioned before, while local lords owned much of the land in the HRE, some of it belonged directly to the Empire. These places were known as "Free Imperial Cities" or Freiei Reichstadt in German.  These cities were not beholden to a local petty lord - the only outside power they answered to was the Emperor himself.  As such, the citizenry had much more control over their lives than those living under the thumb of a lord.  Imperial Cities also enjoyed many special privileges as a result of their status, which meant more trade and wealth during the high middle ages, which the townsfolk used to build beautiful buildings and impressive fortifications (important because local lords of neighboring lands often went to war with the Empire, and the wealth of Imperial Cities made them a tempting target.)  Because of the HRE's association with the Roman Catholic Church, they were fertile ground for religious orders, so many of the grandest churches and monasteries were built in Imperial Cities.  

However, eventually most of the Imperial Cities went through a decline, starting with the spread of Martin Luther's Reformation in the 16th century, which meant that in much of Germany, the religious orders were kicked out and many churches vandalized and no longer places of pilgrimage.  Another factor in the decline was the resulting Thirty Years' War and following plagues, which killed off as many as half the population of Germany.  Most cities never fully recovered from that war.  To make matters worse, most Imperial Cities gained importance as market towns because they were on heavily trafficked trade routes, but by the 1700's, overland trade was losing out to sea-based trade.

This was all bad for the citizens of these towns, but great for travelers who want to enter a well-preserved bit of medieval history.  Because the towns became impoverished, they didn't tear down existing buildings to make way for more fashionable and modern Baroque and Classical buildings as in the now-ascendant capital cities like Berlin, Munich, or Stuttgart.  The result is a large town center with buildings almost exclusively from the cities' golden period of 1200-1500.  

As for the Allied bombing, well, that's fairly self-explanatory.  But a surprising number of former Imperial Cities did manage to escape WWII relatively unscathed, largely because they hadn't been centers of political or economic power for centuries at that point.  (Cities that retained their importance throughout the centuries, like Frankfurt, weren't so lucky.)

If you look at the list of Imperial Cities, you'll find that they include some of the most famous towns for tourists to visit, such as Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Nuremberg, and Colmar.

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But the secret is, nearly all the cities on the list remain beautiful, evocative "hidden gems" that isn't on the typical tourist itinerary.  I'm talking about places like Bad Wimpfen, Ravensburg, and Esslingen, which may be known to people who have lived in Germany for a time but can't be found in a Rick Steves' guidebook. 

Although I've only been to about a third of the Imperial Cities so far, my educated guess is that most of them are well worth a visit by anyone who seeks to get off the beaten path and experience a beautifully-preserved city (just make sure you check the "Allied bombing part before you go - Heilbronn didn't fare so well in that regard.)

And if you'd like to understand more about how Free Imperial status created a dynamic and exciting medieval city, be sure and check out my tour of the Free Imperial City of Esslingen, which debuts next Sunday!  

Why You Should Care About the Holy Roman Empire

I think the "Why you should care" thing is going to become a regular series.  Because there's so many historical things about Germany and Europe that most Americans know little about, that provide the crucial context for really understanding what makes a particular building, church, or city important and interesting.  So with that in mind, let's talk a little about the Holy Roman Empire, shall we?  I'll try really hard not to be boring!

The Holy Roman Empire is one of those topics that's covered for maybe a day or two in U.S. high school world history courses, and maybe slightly more in-depth in a university course, if you're lucky.  I remember being really confused about it in high school.    How was it Roman?  What kind of power did it actually have?  I wasn't the only person to wonder this - the French philosopher Voltaire famously quipped, "The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire."

First, a little backstory:  We're all acquainted with the ancient Roman empire, that huge swath of land that included all of Western Europe and a good chunk of Eastern Europe as well - it was really, really big.  Especially when it was united.  But politics and later, religion, in the Empire led to a split - the Western Roman Empire, headquartered in Rome, and the Eastern Roman Empire, with Constantinople (today's Istanbul) as it's capital.  The two segments of the empire recognized each other, but when Rome fell in the 5th century, the Western Empire basically ceased to exist as a political entity.  The Eastern Empire chugged along for many more centuries, and was eventually called the Byzantine Empire, until it was brought down by invading Turks.

When Rome fell, the Western empire was plunged into disarray, and the native tribes  of those areas began many, many wars for control of the land.  Eventually, the Germanic tribe of the Franks managed to subdue the inhabitants of these lands and ruled over an empire that encompassed most of France and Germany and parts of Italy.  Within the Frankish nobility one particular figure rose to power - Karl der Grosse, better known as Charlemagne.  

Charlemagne not only succeeded in administering the Frankish kingdom well, but brought much more of present-day Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, and Spain under his control. In short, he was a badass.  He also followed in the footsteps of his father, Pippin, in being buddy-buddy with the Pope in Rome, often coming to his aid as this or that group of barbarians threatened the Eternal City.  As a reward, or maybe just as a shrewd political move, the Pope crowned Charlemagne "The emperor of the Romans."  

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It seems a little silly, since the Franks weren't Romans nor was Rome even part of the Empire. But it was a brilliant symbolic marriage between political power and divinely-ordained rule.  It's worth noting that the Byzantines didn't care much for this arrangement, since they still saw themselves as the only existing Roman empire, not this Germanic upstart band of savages.

But still, this was the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.  Despite the fact that the Frankish empire had controlled nearly all of France, due to political upheavals (sons of emperors had a habit of fighting against their fathers or amongst themselves for a bigger piece of the pie in the first few centuries of this arrangement) a good chunk of France came to be an independent kingdom, and the Holy Roman Empire was centered mainly in Germany, although it included Austria, northern Italy, and Alsace-Lorraine.  This new political entity would continue to be extremely influential for the next 1,000 years.

"That's great," you say, yawning, "But you still haven't told me why I need to care about the Holy Roman Empire."  True - I'm saving that for part two.

Why You Should Care About German History

It’s not unusual to think history is boring.  When most of us remember our history classes, we remember memorizing dates, places, names, and not much else.  (Few of us were lucky to have history teachers as fun and amazing as my mother-in-law, Lauren!)   Maybe it’s because we’re a relatively “new” country, but American culture just doesn't seem to have built-in appreciation for history, especially when going beyond the familiar confines of American history from the Mayflower to Vietnam.  

And I’ll be honest, when I moved to Germany, my knowledge of European history was pretty damn limited.  I’d had a brief fascination with Eleanor of Aquitaine as a teen (what, I’m a nerd!) and a similar obsession with Elizabethan England due to working at a Renaissance Faire (see early parentheses) but when I moved to Germany, I knew almost nothing about German history except, you know, Nazis.  

Oh look, another fachwerk house...

But when you live in Germany, you start hearing about all these amazing places to travel.  Esslingen!  Tubingen!  Heidelberg!  Rothenburg!  Weil der Stadt!  Herrenberg!  And so on.   The sad secret is that they quickly all begin to blend together.  Oh, there’s the marktplatz.  Hey, it’s yet another half-timbered house.  Over there is the gothic church.  Even ancient castles start to become a bit of a snore.

You find yourself feeling guilty - you’re surrounded by art, architecture, and really old buildings that initially thrilled you, and now you just really don’t care if you ever see another old city wall.

And this, my fellow expats, is why you need history.

History is what makes every charming village unique, and every cathedral meaningful.  History is how you place these buildings and villages in context, which opens up a rich and fascinating world to explore.  

You thought the Red Wedding was brutal?  Try learning about the Blood Court at Canstatt!

If you like the drama and intrigue of Game of Thrones, you’d be well served to learn about the politics of the Holy Roman Empire, which George R. R. Martin drew much inspiration from when crafting his stories about conniving queens, bastard kings, murder and war.  Sure, there’s no dragons, but the real drama of history iis better than reality television - if you give it a chance.

Esslingen, while exceptionally pretty (even amongst other old German towns that survived the bombing raids of WWII), becomes that much more fascinating when you learn that for most of its history, it was a Free Imperial City, like Nurnberg and Regensburg. While it seems small and quaint today, during its heyday it was far more important and powerful than Stuttgart, and the militias from the town even destroyed the nearby ancestral castle of the Wurttemberg family in the 12th century.  

And it’s not just the older history that’s fascinating and will lend meaning to your explorations.  Stuttgart’s beautiful Alte Schloss becomes much more poignant when you consider that it was the childhood home of the Von Stauffenberg brothers, who were brutally executed for conspiring against Hitler.  

Where's my Heine fangirls at?!?

This isn’t to say everyone can develop a fascination with any aspect of history.  We’re all drawn to different things. My husband is kind of obsessed with Napoleon and his wars and I, well...yeah, not so much. Meanwhile my fascination with German-Jewish writers of the Romantic era has yet to enthrall him.  But there is probably some aspect of German history - be it a period of time (Celts! Romans!  Second Reich!) or a general focus (warfare! music! religion!) - that will interest you, and once you really dive in, you’ll realize that you’re surrounded by fascinating stories right in your own backyard.

Just learning a little bit about both local and German history is addictive, partially because it is so wide-reaching and complex.  A great start are my city walking tours in Stuttgart, which focus on over 1,000 years of fascinating and sometimes bloody history right beneath our feet.  Beyond Stuttgart, there’s a lot of great books and information online.  Here’s a few resources to get you started:

• Wikiepdia.com AND Wikipedia.de - While not an academic resource, the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia offers a great introduction to historical personages, battles, and general overviews of important historical events.  If you find that Wikipedia.com isn’t satisfying your desire for specific local knowledge, try the German site instead, using a browser like Chrome that can automatically translate the text.
• Germania by Simon Winder - a hilarious, entertaining account of one Englishman’s travels through modern Germany, with a lot of good historical knowledge thrown in.  A must for any expat.  
• Millenium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christianity by Tom Holand - The first book that made me really interested in the Holy Roman Empire.  Totally engrossing.  
• The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires, and the Road to World War One by Miranda Carter - Immensely readable, strangely humorous (turns out emperors and kings can be pretty weird) and extremely helpful in understanding the strange politics of an increasingly obsolete nobility at the dawn of a new age.  Highly recommended.
• Anything by Barbara Tuchman.  Most famously, Guns of August is considered such a definitive account on the lead up to World War One that John F. Kennedy made it required reading with his staff.  She has other books on European history as well.
• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson - A history book that reads like a gripping novel.  The author is also famous for “Devil in the White City.”  Seriously, read this book before your next trip to Berlin.  
• Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography by John Toland - If you have any interest in World War II, this book is essential.  It’s huge, but worth it.

Jewish Life - and Loss - in Stuttgart

Tomorrow, November 9th, marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of terror and destruction that is commonly regarded as the beginning of the end for Germany's Jews.   Being an American with an interest in Jewish history living in Germany can be very upsetting sometimes, but it's important to commemorate the full spectrum of that experience over the centuries - the good and the horrific.

Jewish residence in Stuttgart dates back at least to the 1300's, possibly earlier.  For most of the medieval era, Jews were not allowed to settle within the city walls, and were instead crowded into a ghetto on what is today Brennerstrasse in the Bohnenviertel, or Bean Quarter.  Early Counts of Wurttemberg were relatively tolerant of their presence, but the populace often wasn't, with numerous pogroms and expulsions taking place for the next two centuries.  Things got worse for the region's Jewish population in 1492, when Count Eberhard the Bearded of Wurttemberg issued an order expelling all Jews from the County.  This in spite of renowned Stuttgart priest Johannes Reuchlin, who was affilated with the St. Leonard's Church in the Bohnenviertel.  He was the first non-Jewish German to learn Hebrew and a great humanist, but even his influence could not save the Jewish communities of Wurttemberg from exile.  

 The exceptions were in Free Imperial Cities like Esslingen - cities controlled not by the local counts and dukes, but directly by the Holy Roman Emperor.  As a result, Imperial Cities almost always had larger Jewish populations than other capitals, and Esslingen was no exception.  There are far more traces remaining today in Esslingen of medieval Jewish life than there are in Stuttgart. 

Fortunes changed for the better in the the late 1600's, when small numbers affluent Jews were permitted to settle in Stuttgart, and throughout the 1700's several Jewish men and one woman served as economic advisers to the Dukes of Wurttemberg.  This period of relative harmony ended tragically in the case of Joseph Suss Oppenheimer, a trusted advisor to Duke Karl Alexander.  Oppenheimer was unpopular with the court of Wurttemberg, and when Duke Karl died, a mob arrested him and had him hung for treason.  Once again, the Jewish families of Stuttgart were exiled in 1737.  This story was the subject of a Nazi-produced antisemitic propaganda film Jud Suss in 1940.

Duke Karl Eugen Ludwig, founder of Ludwigsburg and otherwise known as the guy who built all the fancy palaces in the area (Neuesschloss, Ludwigsburgschloss, Schloss Solitude, and others) permitted again Jewish merchants to settle in Stuttgart, and after Wurttemberg was elevated to a Kingdom by Napoleon in 1806, conditions continued to improve.  This began the closest thing to a "golden age" the Jewish community of Stuttgart ever experienced, although it was not without widespread antisemitism from the public and setbacks.  Nonetheless, this period marked the beginning of integration into public life for Stuttgart's Jews, with an official city rabbi, a synagogue, ritual baths, and other elements of Jewish religious life appearing.  Bad Canstatt, now part of Stuttgart but then a separate village, also had an increasingly populous and influential Jewish community during the mid-to-late-1800s, and it was during this time that Albert Einstein's parents met in Canstatt and were married at the synagogue there.  Meanwhile, in Stuttgart, city Rabbi Josef Mayer was elevated to the rank of nobility by the King, in recognition for his contributions to literature, poetry, and religious texts as he was an important figure in codifying religiously liberal Reform Judaism.

Within 100 years, the population of Stuttgart's Jews went from 124 in 1825 to 4,548 in 1925, and they had fully equal legal rights under the law.  Jewish people in Stuttgart were teachers, professors, industrialists, judges, soldiers, and politicians.  It's hard to imagine all that progress could be stripped away less than 10 years later, with the rise of the National Socialists and the passage of the Nuremberg laws, which again codified legal discrimination against Jews into German law.

By 1939, the year after Kristallnacht, the Jewish population had been reduced to 2,413 as defined by the Nazi racial laws - which actually counted more people as Jews than previous censuses, as anyone with a Jewish grandparents was considered Jewish, regardless of conversion to Christianity or intermarriage, both of which were common in Stuttgart in the 20s and 30s as Jews continued to assimilate.  This number does not reflect well that as much as 60% of Stuttgart's German Jews, who were mostly middle class, had immigrated, mostly to the U.S.A or what is now Israel by 1939, many of them notable scholars, artists, musicians, scientists, and politicians.  Meanwhile, from the 1910s onward, poorer Jews from Eastern Europe, fleeing antisemitic pogroms, had settled in the area in those decades and lacked the funds to immigrate overseas to escape Nazi persecution.

The synagogue in Ludwigsburg burns on Kirstallnacht

Kristallnacht was a Nazi-organized, nationwide pogrom against synagogues, Jewish-owned business, and Jewish homes.  As with nearly every city, Stuttgart's synagogue and most of its holy objects were destroyed.   91 Jewish people died during the attacks, and many were rounded up and jailed under false pretenses.  The "night of broken glass" shattered any remaining illusions that German Jews may have held about attempting to wait out the Nazi regieme as they'd survived so many bouts of antisemitism throughout the centuries.  Those with the ability to immigrate did, but securing visas was difficult and even "friendly" countries like the United States and England severely restricted the number of refugees they would accept.  Nazi laws had made Jews stateless persons, with no legal rights.  For nearly all of Stuttgart's remaining 2,400 Jews, there was simply no way out.

It was under this situation that the first mass deportation of Stuttgart's Jews began on October 24, 1941, from the now-destroyed trade center at Killesberg.  Most Jews deported from Stuttgart went to the Theriesenstadt camp, or to Auschwitz.  Less than 10% of deported Jews from Stuttgart survived the camps.

Memorial to the deportation of Stuttgart's Jews

Some of Stuttgart's Jewish population did manage avoid deportation, through hiding, often assisted by "righteous gentiles" who opposed the Nazi regime.   The vast majority of those who survived the war left Germany in the years immediately after the war.  

Stuttgart's Jewish community has never come close to fully recovering, although it is estimated that the population today is around 500 people.  A new synagogue was built on the site of the old one in the 1950s.  Many of Stuttgart's Jewish population today hails from the former Soviet Union, seeking refuge here to avoid persecution. 

Evidence of the slowly reemerging Jewish community is evident in the Jewish Culture Week, which takes place this year from November 4th through the 17th.  The program includes lectures, klezmer concerts, cooking classes, and tours of the city and synagogue.  A schedule (in German) can be found here.  

This is by no means anything other than an introduction to the topic of the Jewish history Stuttgart.  A trove of more detailed information exists online, and I highly recommend reading this history of Jewish life in Stuttgart as well as this harrowing description of Kristallnacht and the repressive laws that followed.

I also highly recommend watching this 30 minute documentary, in English, about the last two Holocaust survivors from Stuttgart.  It is incredibly moving and informative, and stresses how important it is that this history is never forgotten even when the eyewitnesses have ceased to exist

Two Holocaust survivors on the train from Stuttgart to Theresienstadt. Sharing memories of the deportation of the German Jews with a group of young people and artists from their former home town. www.swr.de