Author / omniagallia

by omniagallia

Berlin; Longest Remaining Segment of Berlin Wall:

CONTEXT: A bleak artifact of the Cold War between the U.S./NATO and U.S.S.R./Warsaw Pact from about 1950 to 1990, and a focus of superpower military friction which we who lived at that time feared could spark World War III at any moment; a terrifying anxiety to constantly endure. I may repost more captions (referred to in here) about it that I wrote for my other pictures from Berlin later, on this blog.

But I include this item as one of my first blog posts, because in it I speculate that the Nazis’ beastliness could probably only be defeated by an even bigger beast, like Stalin’s U.S.S.R. A depressing, but plausible observation. The Russians overran eastern Germany and captured Berlin in Spring 1945, taking ferocious revenge on German civilians for Hitler’s unprovoked invasion of their land and the innumerable and unspeakable atrocities committed there by German armed forces. It must have seemed like the wrath of one of the warlike Norse gods the Nazis had revered (Thor?) was being visited on them. Nazism proudly lived by the sword, and – unsurprisingly – perished by it, taking much of the prior world with it in its collapse.

The Wall, mandated by pressure from that Soviet ‘bigger beast,’ was started in 1961, meant to stop the outflow of East Germans into (free) West Berlin. So it was actually, in effect a monument to the failure and dysfunction of ossified Communism to create a world most people would not flee if allowed to do so. This essay reflects on the dynamics that finally dissipated Marxism’s inflexible, sacrosanct ideology, as well as on the ultimately futile means deployed to impose and sustain it.

(As noted before, the ‘we’ mentioned in this piece is my friend Paul from Boston, who was with me for the middle part of my travels, from Salzburg to Berlin.)

This is not the same preserved Wall section I discussed in earlier posts, but one we saw from our passing tour bus. As I later learned, this is right next to the Topography of Terror, the memorial on the site of Gestapo headquarters, whose horrendous dungeons survived because the Wall’s Death Strip was later built over their ruins. In a bit of mordant irony, that Strip was one iniquity succeeding another (Gestapo HQ), until events rendered it too, unsustainable – though far less violently than the military apocalypse that subsumed the Gestapo along with all of Hitler’s other foul works.

The Berlin Wall finally fell because Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet president in the late 1980s, had made clear to Soviet client governments in Eastern Europe that he would not use Russian armed force to keep them in power, as the U.S.S.R. had done in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. And as it became obvious that the Iron Curtain was corroding, the East German regime – though willing to kill a handful of its would-be escapees – had no stomach to slaughter its own citizens en masse. Or at least, not without Russian backing. Or perhaps they finally realized there was no way they could do so with a straight face, and maintain their obviously sham pretense of being ‘a People’s government.’

The details of how the Wall finally ceased to imprison East Germans are complex, but its abrupt opening was sudden, fast and chaotic. On November 9, 1989, after the regime made an ambiguous announcement about loosening transit restrictions at the Wall, crowds of East Berliners approached it demanding to pass into West Berlin, and – almost miraculously – its guards, unsure what their superiors had really intended, let them do so. It was like the opening of the Red Sea to Moses.

Other Ossies (Easterners), on hearing this news, dropped what they were doing and sprinted past the barriers and into the West. They feared their rulers might capriciously change their minds, clamp the gates shut again, and massacre disobedient citizens (as had happened 5 months earlier at Tienanmen Square in Beijing). Many probably had only the clothes on their backs, unsure if they could ever return home, but were willing to abandon their whole prior lives for a straight-forward chance at the liberties they knew existed beyond the Wall. Only vicious force like the Nazis would have used, without hesitation – which the East German state would not – could have crushed such a huge popular upsurge.

The Wall ultimately turned out to be a futile, feeble thing, its grip inexorably worn down by the restive, rumbling hostility of millions of Europeans and their hopes for self-actualization, instead of a Socialist straight-jacket worldview. With wondrous irony, it was almost inadvertently opened by bureaucratic fumbling between the East German regime and its security forces.

(In Moscow’s Eastern Bloc, obedience to Marxist doctrine often counted for more than practical competence. The confusion that led to a sudden lapse of restrictions may have been partly a spectacular instance of people who got critical jobs because they were loyal, rather than because they were capable.)

And the evil spell of fear and helplessness in nations where the U.S.S.R. had imposed Stalinist Communism after World War II withered over a few breathtaking weeks, crushed under newly assertive popular aspirations. If you want to see the power of collective will and spirit, find and watch film of that electrifying November night at the Wall. It was astonishing, glorious, and intoxicating to people watching it on television, as much of the world did. East Berliners standing atop the Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate in the background, bashed at it with sledgehammers charged by decades of pent-up rage. That was an image for the Ages; the atmosphere in Paris after the fall of the Bastille may have felt much the same.

Lenin, father of the Soviet Union, once said that a successful revolution is usually just ‘the kicking in of a rotten door.’ And so it was; in 1989, the ‘Annus Mirabilis’ (Year of the Miracle), the festering Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe collapsed with relatively minor ripples. The West’s dynamics of individuals’ worth and autonomy – which, rather than sullen Russian passivity were the true opposites of the Nazis’ glorification and mobilization of our worst instincts – had finally outlasted the East’s downtrodden subservience.

Such a ruthless, despotic use of Soviet power had been essential to do most of the bloody, brute work of pummeling Hitlerism to death. But whether those Western style ‘dynamics’ have triumphed forever is still unfolding now, in 2017.

(And regrettably is still ‘unfolding,’ in 2022, as of this re-posting. Demolishing the concrete of the Wall was only the start, and possibly, the easy part, of making a truly ‘Free’ world.)

by omniagallia

Prague; Eastern Gate to Charles Bridge:

CONTEXT: One of the most famous and scenic bridges in the world and a foremost sight of Prague, where we spent a single day en route from Vienna to Berlin. Its famous collection of statuary was accumulated over generations, but its fortified towers at each end are near-original, and common features of Medieval bridges. Such crossings were difficult and costly to build and maintain, so were placed at points of great strategic or commercial importance. They often also served a defensive purpose, with fortifications like this gate tower at either end to repel invaders who might cross them to attack any city in which they were located. Old London Bridge, built in the Twelfth Century, had similar construction.

Here is the fortification at the other end of this bridge, nearer the Old Town. Its roadway is now only for pedestrians, and was very lively even on a chilly day in October. On a fair day in June, it must be as crowded as St. Mark’s Square in Venice.

I’m glad so many people can now travel, a privilege once limited by poor transport and expense, although such democratization can change an ambiance drastically. Lovely and evocative of distant ages as places like this are, it is hard to contemplate the sweep of passing time when forcefully reminded of the here and now by jostling groups chattering in many languages. But personally, I am willing to accept a diminished individual experience for the benefits of living at a time when ordinary people can have the luxury of travel. That is, are not considered their leisure-class betters’ mere workhorses, who have no business expecting any of the good things of life, and who rarely get them.

Moreover: Travel enables us to learn about both the cultural variations and fraternal similarities of our neighbors on this planet. For example, the many Chinese visitors I saw in Prague probably knew very little about the place, yet some of them appeared to be on the verge of tears of joy at what fantastic, exotic sights they were seeing. That was something that I – their fellow non-Czech – could fully share with them.

Some of us may like to study in advance to understand at a deeper level what we will see in our journey. But “Wonder” is a universal language; it needs no translation or practice.

by omniagallia

Berlin; Rudolf Virchow Monument:

CONTEXT: This was the last of my photos of Berlin I had previously posted online from my visit there in 2016. Berlin was the nexus of my tour of Europe; no other place had played such an outsize role in global events in such a sudden and violent manner, due to its having been the epicenter of Hitler’s efforts to impose his ghastly vision on the world. Many of my posts about the city’s history and consequence focus on its Nazi era, when it was the site of bestial efforts to revive primal domination as human life’s supreme value, an effort undertaken using 20th Century science.

But Berlin before Hitler was a place of many great achievements for humanity, not against it. It deserves better than just a litany of crimes committed there by brutish men who hated its renowned free spirits, and did their worst to replace them with evil ones. So I ended my original online discussion about the city with this reminder of its level of contribution to civilization.

I had never heard of Virchow, who was honored by this statue near Humboldt University. Like Humboldt himself, he is not well-known in the English-speaking world; surely not as much as he should be. Piqued by this grandiose memorial, I researched Virchow, and learned that its drama is not excessive for his achievements.

He was one of Germany’s greatest scientists in the 19th century, a founder of public health studies – now a field of universal significance. He also rejected many racial theories the Nazis would later espouse (he died in 1902, long before their coming), using science to advocate generous perspectives about the fundamental brotherhood of the human family. Such theories were exceptional even for his own time, the Age of Colonialism, when Europeans and Americans were going forth to co-opt and exploit other parts of the planet, taking for granted their inherent supremacy as Caucasians, and their destiny to rule.

This memorial may be a post-war replacement. In view of Virchow’s assertion of the underlying equality of human ethnicities, it seems possible the Nazis might have destroyed any remembrance of him, as they had Lessing’s statue in Vienna. In any case, it now serves as a reminder of a life, and an era, of which Berlin and Germany may be justly proud, with no need to proclaim them the acts of bogus “Supermen.” Virchow’s actual deeds honored mankind’s potential more than any marble trophy could.

In addition to its stain by Nazism, Berlin deserves to have its very substantial contributions to our collective progress reclaim their role in how the city is perceived. Virchow was just one of its residents who made our world better in a practical sense, or even expanded our understandings of the universe (as did Einstein, a long-time Berlin resident).

At first, this statue seemed to be just one more gratuitous Germanic exaltation of strength. But it isn’t; the struggling figures are evidently meant to show the progress, in which Virchow played a major role, in subduing an ogre: Epidemic.

If that is the case, then this truly is a worthy image of an epic accomplishment of reason and enterprise, not a crude effort to warn the viewer to bow to power. Not about mere domination, this portrays our contending with one of the world’s worst scourges. And as such, this dramatic imagery is supremely appropriate.

Given Virchow’s counter-evidence to what the Nazis would later preach, this monument may also suggest how Man’s better instinct can vanquish his baser one, a pestilence often more insidious than those of Nature. This goal can be achieved by great personal exertions like his, or simply by treating life as something savory and thrilling, rather than as Hitler saw it: A blood sport, in which it is the right and duty of the strong to crush the weak.

As such, Virchow’s life seems a fitting end of my postings about Berlin, a partial offset to its being bound to Nazism in the world’s imagination. Stories like his might be truer to the city’s historical essence than its short-lived plague of Fascism. The latter must never be forgotten, but it is far from being Berlin’s whole, or principal, identity.

My last comment on this city, given all the diversity and openhearted (if not exuberant) “Luft” it showed me, is a hope that it may contribute positively to human enlightenment again – even more than the role it once played in our near-run reversion to beasts.

by omniagallia

Vienna; Karlskirche (Charles’ Church) Interior:

CONTEXT: From my 2016 Europe trip, previously posted online: This image of a high-Baroque church, built in gratitude for Vienna’s deliverance from what was to be its final Plague, in 1713, has great historical implications. But in this post, I graze on issues and forces that interweave with history, but do not necessarily fit within its (presumed) logic. Or any other.

An outburst of piety expressed in paint, marble, gilding, etc. The whole interior is a carefully orchestrated riot of decorative elements, but the depiction of Saint Charles Borromeo (name saint of Austria’s ruler at the time, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI) over the altar, in the middle of this picture, is the focal point. He is being “assumed,” bodily into Heaven – which, referencing the Old Testament, is suggested in a triangle above with the most sacred name of the God of Israel in Hebrew letters.

Historians (as I style myself) must sometimes caution against Presentism: That is, when living people judge events and artifacts from the past shorn of their context of culture and then-current events, by their own (contemporary) frame of reference. This can be quite misleading; the Karlskirche, built in roughly the same era as Saint Paul’s in London, may seem to some today a misallocation of energies (it was also an expression of imperial Hapsburg prestige). But consider: What might future generations think of Our priorities? Especially if they are trying to survive on an Earth deeply degraded by our unconsidered material self-indulgence?

When this was being built, it was not clear that humanity could or would ever be able to control the world in such a way as to vanquish terrors like Plague – that is, deflating physical phenomena to predictable, manageable processes.

People then would no doubt be glad for an end to pestilence, along with reliable sources of food, clean water, heat, light, etc., such as we in the 21st Century enjoy. But they might have a question for us: What point does human life really have, if every facet of it can be reduced to mere mechanisms, seemingly devoid of any potentially collective (not just individual) ‘consummating’ purpose? This church – like most places of aspiration – offers a vision of a world fundamentally better than the one we can perceive, not just tidied up somewhat.

by omniagallia

Berlin; Wagner Memorial:

On the southern edge of Berlin’s main public park, the Tiergarten, stood this elaborate monument to Richard Wagner, arguably Germany’s greatest operatic composer, creator of “The Ring of the Niebelung,” etc. It shows Wagner seated on top gazing at some unseen Valhalla, with other figures, presumably characters from his works, beneath him. I don’t know why the protective overhead canopy was added; maybe his memory is considered too precious to be exposed to the indignities of Nature?

In most places, a memorial to Wagner would just be an edifying tribute to creative genius, but in Germany, events have given his memory darker overtones. His career began in the mid-19th century, well before German unification, but as a strident nationalist, he was considered one of the new German Empire’s artistic godfathers (as Verdi was, for Italy). He set to music ancient Teutonic myths which not only praised heroic values, but offered shared national legends to Germanic peoples – Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, Hessians, etc. – united by language, culture and experience, but long politically separated.

Before and after the founding of the Empire, Wagner wrote music that portrayed Germans as a noble, chivalrous, valiant – and martial – race, and which continued to define and nourish the new country’s sense of identity. Having finally achieved their long-thwarted dream of single nationhood, many Germans reveled in how Wagner depicted their origins and glorified their virtues, seemingly now also manifest in their thriving land’s great feats of science, industry and the arts.

Wagner died in 1883 (well before Hitler was born), but after Germany’s defeat in the Great War/World War I, resentful nationalists continued to be agitated by his works. Hitler, a rabid believer in inherent ethnic superiority, was a fanatical Wagnerian – as much for his message as for his music. Also, Wagner had been well-known as a cultural (if not violent) anti-Semite, considering Jews an alien adulteration of pure German blood and culture – though there is evidently debate as to whether, or how much, Wagner might have approved of the Nazis and their goals.

(I’m not qualified to have a scholarly opinion on that debate. However, pride in one’s ethnic background does not automatically imply enthusiasm for lethal vainglory, let alone for mass murder.)

The Nazis use of Wagner as both symbol and inspiration, to adulate “manly” German pride and destiny, has blotted his reputation ever since their downfall. During World War II, German military heroes often got the signal reward of being sent to performances of his operas in their spiritual sanctuary, the theater Wagner himself designed in Bayreuth (in Bavaria). More gruesome, his music was allegedly played in guard barracks in concentration camps, to make the guards feel heroic (drugged, more like) so they could murder “sub-human” prisoners without hesitation or remorse. Joyously, in fact.

Thus, Wagner, though by any standards a great artist, may never again be known exclusively for his art, as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are. He may always have the stain of heinous associations, made long after his death, about which it is impossible to be sure how he would have felt. The Nazis used his music to beguile the German people with things they (or at least, a great many of them) longed to believe about themselves, as demigods – unbound by the rules of lesser men – beliefs that would energize them to commit many of the worst crimes of the 20th century.

So I include this picture of his monument as a meditation on German cultural inclination to Fascism, for the way his music was used to stimulate, then sustain the Nazis’ exaltation of power as this world’s principle value. It is a caution that even creativity meant to offer us the experience of the sublime, like Wagner’s music, can be misapplied so as to lure us into the diabolical, and distract us from our sacred, humanity-defining duties as beings capable of empathy.

Art is not meant to so intoxicate a man that he is willing to be indifferent to hate in his heart or blood on his hands; but that was how Hitler used Wagner’s resplendent music.

by omniagallia

Berlin; Gestapo Headquarters Prison Cell:

CONTEXT: This was taken from my original online posts about my trip to Europe in October, 2016. Other posts from my visit to Berlin gave more context about this site, for example, that the Gestapo building had originally been the Prussian Academy of Arts; hence the reference here to ‘art school studios.’

Detainees were held in these underground cells; with walls of common white industrial tile, this might be any basement in the world if one didn’t know what it had been. Gestapo staff routinely tortured prisoners during questioning on the destroyed building’s top floor, where the art school studios had been, but these tiles presumably witnessed immeasurable fear, pain and sorrow before and after such interrogations.

When a site of atrocity shows no evidence of it – just tidy, white walls – the mind’s eye conjures images. The ones I saw were horrific, so I couldn’t treat this as just some generic place of interest; its searing poignancy pleaded for a gesture of sympathy, however seemingly pointless, for what had been endured here. So I gently stroked the smooth surface of these tiles, as if to soothe agony one could imagine seeping through their coating and still being there, in need of comfort. None of the staff told me to stop; I almost certainly wasn’t the first to do such a thing.

Surely, in such a setting, no compassionate impulse, however clumsy, impractical or non-rational should be suppressed; and stroking those tiles was the only one I could think of at that moment. Deliberate suffering of the magnitude inflicted here degrades all of human experience, and thus transcends time; it felt urgent to be empathic to it, no matter how long ago it happened.

But if this place, foremost, saw cruelty and horror, it must also have seen Olympian courage and nobility. Presumably only high-value suspects would have been brought here, major spies, ranking prisoners of war, officials of resistance movements in occupied countries or Germany itself – people the Gestapo thought had precious knowledge that they would do anything, and everything, to extract.

We should remember and honor the bravery many of them must have shown, facing the most terrible circumstances, a price often worse than death paid to save the world from Nazism. Heroes died under hideous torture in this building, rather than yield information that could have cost thousands of Allied lives, or even altered the course of the war. The secrets they defended – despite having their teeth and fingernails torn out, and even worse – surely helped destroy Hitler.

One may find cause to have hope for humanity, even in the most awful, unlikely settings – indeed, perhaps especially in them. Here, men and women, aware they were being tormented for the sake of something far greater than their own lives, found the strength to withhold things the Gestapo was furious to learn, things on which the very fate of our species – its progress, or its eventual regression – might have pivoted.

The evil done in the structure that once stood here was incalculable – but not insurmountable. Within it, some of the darkest depths and brightest heights, the very worst and very best, of human nature contended and played out. And surely, the better side sometimes won, mightier than all the savagery deployed against it.

Thus, blood shed here helped water a rose of freedom.

For me, that is enough to sustain faith that all mankind is not corrupt beyond redemption. That faith is my tribute to all those who suffered here for posterity’s sake; it would feel ungrateful to yield to cynicism, as if their glorious example and sacrifice were for nothing. Valor that inspiring is never “for nothing,” but the heroism sometimes shown here helped rescue the honor of our race from the primal stain that Hitlerism was.

by omniagallia

Berlin; Battle Scars on Kaiser Wilhelm Church Ruins: ‘Peccavimus’

CONTEXT: This was taken during my 2016 visit to Berlin, a vast capital city whose center had to be nearly annihilated to destroy Nazism during World War II. Thus, little of pre-war Berlin remains; almost all buildings in the city center now date from after the wreckage of the bombing and Soviet invasion were cleared, after 1945. But this structure was deliberately left in ruins, lest Germans ever forget how their country had to be pummeled to defeat Hitler, the evil genius they had empowered, or merely tolerated.

Berlin was the historic pivot of my visit to Europe because of its Nazi past so I wrote an especially extensive Overview (mentioned below) about the city for my photos from there, which I may repost here later.

These are the gouges I mentioned at the end of my initial Overview of visiting Berlin, saying that, to me, they suggested wailing, howling mouths – especially in view of where they are, how they got there, and the grim reminders as which they serve forever, for Germany and the world. 

I haven’t titled any of my travel pictures up to now, but felt this one deserved a name because of its powerful imagery.  I considered calling it “The Wailing Wall,” but given the Nazi context, feared that might offend Jewish sensibilities.  So instead, I sought a name from a different source, and summoned a word from my high school Latin: “Peccavimus.” 

“We Have Sinned.”

by omniagallia

In Honor of Al Gore (originally posted online, January 10, 2021):

CONTEXT: I would hope that any American who truly loves his or her country would agree with the sentiments of this post, written a few days after the barbarous tumult of January 6, 2021 – a date that should live in infamy. No one who believes that our Republic should be about inclusion, not a fossilized status quo, could approve allowing crudely released passion to try overturning the operation of law (which, it bears remembering, hadn’t happened when the Electoral college voted in 2017 – even though the electee then had lost the popular vote). I wrote this in shock and dread at the forces recklessly and selfishly exploited by a man floridly unfit to be president; let alone to be re-elected.

This is an appropriate time to remember the actions of former Vice-President Al Gore late in the year 2000. As many of you will recall, he conceded that year’s election, and the Presidency, to George W. Bush, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the deadline for questioning the pivotal, feverishly contested vote in Florida had passed. Mr. Gore had good reason to believe he might have actually won Florida, but that possibility is not my subject here.

Rather, it is to hold up Gore for retrospective praise, now that we have just seen behavior in such stark contrast to his. Acting as any authentic patriot should (and would) have, he accepted personal defeat, subordinating his own ambition to the welfare of our nation. In yielding further plausible claims to victory, he sacrificed his hopes and ego for a greater good. Ironically, his decision strongly suggests he had the judgment and character to lead a superpower. Anyone who would not have done the same is almost certainly unworthy of the crucial trust of high office.

Gore’s acquiescence brings to mind the Biblical judgment of Solomon, of a mother who so loved her child that she was willing to release it to a rival claimant rather than see it rent in half and killed. I doubt Gore is a saintly man; back then, he was probably seething privately at conceding. But at that pivotal moment, he was unwilling to be the cause of dangerous national divisiveness, admitting that the well-being of our Republic was more important than his own political destiny.

Some people are unwilling, or unable, to grasp ethics that high.

In light of recent events, Gore’s behavior long ago – deeply disappointed, but still accepting the authority of the law and putting the fate of America first – urgently deserves to be reflected on now.

His deed also rebuked the toxic, simian ‘Real Man’ concept of a winner as one who cares only about satisfying his pride; who thinks rules are for weaklings; who cares nothing for decency, let alone decorum; who feels entitled to victory simply for being ruthless enough to stop at nothing to achieve it; and who is brutishly indifferent to any harm he does while pursuing his Hubris.

But Real ‘winners’ Will concede; will grant that other people’s welfare is more important than their personal aspirations; will recognize that moral principle is more valuable than fleeting triumph. Gore showed honor, maturity, responsibility, and a degree of grace – even if somewhat grudgingly so. Thus he has won the right to deserve respect and gratitude forever.

So I hope those planning the 2021 Inauguration give him a prominent place there. His decision to yield in late 2000 – which has never looked more statesmanlike or wiser than now – deserves a standing ovation when he arrives.

The recent counter-example to his behavior of 20 years ago should make us appreciate its value now, more than ever.

by omniagallia

Paris; Eastern Facade of the Louvre:

CONTEXT: A prior online posting from my 2016 tour in Europe, which began in Paris (where I’d been 4 times before). This is the only one of my INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL pieces for this blog that I have extensively expanded from its brief original, done to re-affirm here my affection for, and joy in, French culture and aesthetics. Many of my postings from Germany (some of which will appear in the TRAVELS category/tag here) are much longer than my captions of photos taken in my first destinations, Paris, Venice and Salzburg were. This is because German power, ambition and excess so impacted the 20th Century that once I had originally started posting those online with explanatory captions, I often felt moved to compose long, quasi-essays for pictures I took in Berlin and after, discussing their implications within an historical setting.

But this view is one of my very favorite marvels of anyplace I have traveled, a breathtaking apparition of sheer majesty – a reason for admiration, not meditation. So I have enlarged my original caption for it in honor of how dear it is to me personally. And in hopes that any visitor to Paris may come to seek and savor this vision of loveliness; overlooked, like Cinderella – but unlike her, with a well-scrubbed surface.

To my eyes, this may be the grandest façade anywhere, a perfect combination of ideal proportion and regal demeanor. Despite its auspicious location at the eastern end of the world’s greatest art museum, it is overlooked by many visitors to Paris, overshadowed by the main entrance to the galleries dominated by I.M. Pei’s glass Pyramid portals. At one time, this was the main entrance to the palace, and if now often underappreciated, its cool, elegantly understated aesthetic (the work of a committee, though mainly credited to Claude Perrault) is keenly admired by perceptive architects and art students.

And by me. Paris’ sumptuous pre-World War I, ‘Belle Epoque’ architecture is the city’s most immediate, attention-grabbing appeal for me, and this exterior (some 200 years older than the period cited above) is in my opinion the very best of the best of that rarefied standard: The pinnacle compliment I can pay. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, and this has been a basic template for palaces and other uniquely illustrious buildings elsewhere, ever since its completion. It is visible evidence, imperturbable in granite, of how far above the ever-present squalor of life our ingenuity can enable us to rise.

Ironically, though this front was meant to be a suitably noble prospect for a principal royal residence, it had that status for only a short time. Within a few years of its being finished in 1670, France’s King Louis XIV, who had commanded it to be built, left it and Paris behind. A main reason for this was that he distrusted the city because of political violence that had threatened him there when he was a child monarch. And no doubt the scope and impression of this addition to the Louvre was partly intended to awe the local populace as a display of absolute royal power.

Nevertheless, by the mid-1670’s Louis was creating his huge new palace complex at Versailles, then about an hour’s swift horseback ride from central Paris. Not only did his permanent relocation to Versailles by 1680 allow Louis to avoid the potential tumult of his capital (along with its noise, smells, pestilence etc.), but that vast residence was purpose-built to house a full royal court where all the important aristocrats of France could be gathered, housed, diverted – and discreetly kept under the watchful eye of the regime, far from their own domains, where they might misuse their unchecked local authority.

Personally, I find the Descartes-like austere grandeur of this design more handsome than the sensuous Baroque exuberance of Versailles. I don’t know if Louis regretted having to leave behind a setting magnificent enough for one who styled himself ‘le Roi du Soleil’ (the Sun King), but this marvelous construction – still virtually brand new then – more or less languished after his departure, with little regular role in royal life. And such was the unregulated density of Paris at the time that common hovels got built nearly up to these very walls (as at Notre Dame), till all of those were removed as the city was rebuilt for orderly urban function in the mid-19th century, partly to give less cluttered surroundings and more edifying views of such venerable edifices.

I strongly recommend that you seek out this spectacle of reserved stateliness if you visit Paris. Like many of her great sights, it is floodlit at night; this picture was taken on a Saturday evening when thousands of Parisians strolled this neighborhood of illuminated, world-famous landmarks. As noted, locals seem to take their epic cityscape for granted – what a fantastic privilege! – but they evidently occasionally disregard the familiarity of their extraordinary surroundings, to acknowledge and fully appreciate them.

by omniagallia

Vienna; Hofburg Palace:

CONTEXT: The most determinedly grand façade I saw in Europe (though not as succesful the colonnade of the Louvre), the main frontage of the imperial palace in Vienna, the Hofburg. Built as a suitable setting for august royal ceremony, it would also be the site of one of history’s most ominous spectacles, as described below; a frenzy of xenophobic vainglory. A jolting contrast to all this elegant dignity. There is also a passing reference to sculptural portrayals of strength, noted in other posts, as an apparent Germanic fixation.

The Habsburgs’ main residence, enlarged over six centuries. This handsome, curved façade was its last major expansion, completed in 1913, the year before the Empire provoked The Great War (World War I) that led to its own demise. Nowhere, it seemed to me, was their Imperial, dynastic prestige more manifest than in this literally majestic edifice. But there were so many distracting sights in the vicinity that I forgot about what was probably the worst event it ever witnessed: From its central balcony in 1938, Hitler proclaimed the union (“Anschluss”) of his native Austria to Nazi Germany, to the wild cheers of tens of thousands of enthralled spectators.

Few places of Hitler’s triumphs remain in Berlin, which was largely leveled in World War II, so I wish I’d remembered at the time what had happened on that balcony, and reflected on it even if it made me shudder. The Habsburgs had treated their fellow Austrian-Germans as first among their subject peoples, but not with toxic ethnic chauvinism. It was left to Hitler to replace the primacy of royal blood with the inherent supremacy of German-Aryan genes.

Perhaps it was the loss of the higher status they’d had under the Empire that made so many Austrians so thrilled to be led into the Third Reich, with its seductive promises of restoring Germanic glory and dominion. By the way, the Hofburg is where the hyper-muscled statues I’d earlier contrasted to French ones are. That cultural preoccupation with power seems telling, for Hitler chose this very place to, effectively, extol strength as man’s chief virtue – and the only true determinant of his Fate.