After Berlin in 2016, I only meant to visit one other German city. It wasn’t easy to decide which, as there are so many rich in history, culture, picturesque settings, etc., but I selected Cologne (Koln) in southwest Germany, principle center of the Rhineland, the basin of the great river. This area was long a powerhouse of the nation’s Industrial, and now post-Industrial, economy, with Cologne one of a group of towns (Bonn, Essen, Dusseldorf, etc.) that have grown till their regional boundaries seem to nearly overlap.

Two attractions, both referenced in this image, made me choose it. First, its heritage as one of Germany’s oldest municipalities; the Romans built an extensive urban outpost here, their Empire’s primary foothold in this part of Europe (Berlin, first documented ca. 1300 and long of little consequence, is comparatively new). Its name derives from Latin “Colonia” – Colony – which evolved to “Koln”; ‘Cologne’ is the French spelling. Considerable Roman ruins, including the rough arch shown here, still exist on and under its streets, and it has a superb museum of classical antiquities, mostly local.

Second in time, but more important to me personally, the city is home to what is arguably the greatest Gothic church on Earth, Cologne cathedral; in German, the Kolner Dom (formal name: St. Peter’s Cathedral). Its original design, conceived to hold the supposed relics of the Three Magi, was not completed till 600+ years after construction began; major currents of European history caused both its attenuation and its eventual completion. I’d been aware of this edifice since childhood, and felt that if I could only get to one place especially known for a splendid church, this may be the best of them all.

Cologne’s setting on the Rhine near its confluence with other waterways helped secure its long-term economic importance and prosperity. It remained substantial long after Rome fell, despite the general regression of the Dark Ages, through Medieval times and beyond, but during World War II its prominence and relative nearness to Britain (and its military airfields), made it a target of frequent Allied bombing. On the other hand, when the Third Reich was finally vanquished, the city, being far west, was captured by Americans, rather than Russians. So though already bombed nearly to dust, it was spared a paroxysm of street combat like Berlin suffered, and oppressive Soviet occupation.

I won’t write much on the Nazi era in Cologne as I did for Berlin, the historic focus of my travel in Europe, but it should be noted the Nazis regarded the place with suspicion. It had two alternate centers of power they could never fully co-opt nor crush: A robust presence of both Catholicism and Communism. The Church, though not as defiant of Fascism as it might have been, was by no means fully compliant with it, and was a stout obstacle to Hitler’s ultimate wish to scour Christianity from Aryan society. (In Nazism, Jesus was just another contemptible Jew, offering morality suitable only for vile weaklings. In fact, many Nazis felt that only weak and unworthy people needed the consolations of religion at all; in their view, the only truly worthy folk put their faith in strength, power and victory; ‘Sieg.’)

And Communism had been vigorous in the Rhineland’s vast labor base. The Nazis hated Marxism – like Christianity, a worldview with a Jewish founder – and decapitated the German Communist Party soon after taking power in 1933, imprisoning and killing its leaders, closing its newspapers, etc. But they couldn’t identify and coerce everyone who had ever voted ‘Bolshewik,’ so the heavily industrialized Ruhr Valley north of Cologne was one of several previously Red pockets in the Reich where National Socialism never fully took hold. Scorn, if not outright hostility to it, lay not far below the surface of Cologne’s vicinity; and Hitler knew it.

And his war brought cataracts of bombs down on the tepid town, as on most major German localities, although its lofty cathedral was relatively slightly damaged, deliberately spared by Allied warplanes to serve as a targeting coordinate. They apparently dropped their bombs on anything within ca. 2 miles around it, and thus most other cherished local buildings got smashed. Long after peace came, a few of those were painstakingly replicated, but it was impossible to restore all that were lost. Presumably, as in dozens of shattered urban areas across Europe, hard choices had to be made as to what had to be rebuilt immediately to return devastated, depopulated Cologne to life, and only then to revive its spirit.

Old photos include this arch, remnant of a large Roman gate, in front of the Dom, that seemed to show it had originally been about 15 feet lower. As part of reconstructing the wrecked city, the open space around the cathedral was raised so traffic can pass below it to allow unimpeded pedestrian access to the nearby main train station. The arch may have been lifted to the new grade level, but presumably in its previous horizontal location relative to the Dom, to (partially) preserve this remarkable spectacle, eloquently suggesting fundamental continuity between the distant past and present; of Cologne, and of the world.

Even so, disturbing this venerable artifact would have been a fitting metaphor for the epic upheavals this site, and city, have witnessed.

CONTEXT: After the forbidding Brutalist image of the anti-aircraft Flak tower, here is a contrasting sequel to both its appearance and purpose, less than half a mile away. In my post about the Ann Frank House’s relative nearness to the museum with Rembrandt’s revelatory ‘The Night Watch’ (posted July 17, 2022), I remarked the irony of that proximity: ‘a summit and an abyss of human endeavor, separated by a brief walk, yet from different worlds.’ And that contrast is reflected here also – with no poignant side-story like Anne’s – though this post contains a story of a different sort of tragic loss.

Few people alive today remember military conflict on a global scale like the second World War, but spectacles like that Flak Tower (and awareness of all the resources wasted on such things) may help drive home the message that national combat is the most pervasively awful, perversely counter-productive sorrow we inflict on ourselves. A British observer of World War I wrote of its devouring trenches, machine gun nests, high explosives, poison gas, etc., ‘It is all the work of the Devil.’

And so it is; in whatever guise ‘the Devil’ may take, trying to supplant our finest efforts and aspirations – such as are amassed on Berlin’s Museum Island – with our very worst ones. Unless one considers absolute indifference to the well-being of others a virtue, there is nothing noble, let alone, glorious about War – something about which we, who lack personal experience of it, must never let ourselves be deceived.

In another of my 2016 posts, this building appeared above a colorfully lit tour boat on the Spree river at night, a display of Berlin’s festive impulses. Germany’s capital is said to exploit its warm months more than any other city in Northern Europe, with an overabundance of outdoor events and pursuits. This was not so visible when we were there in mid-October, but the city felt very lively in any case. Even though signs of its destruction due to its role as Hitler’s capital can still be noticed, and it still suffers in the world’s consciousness from its (none too willing) association with him, it is not just a haunt of evil memories.   

This building sits at the prow of Berlin’s Museum Island, home of a remarkable assembly of exhibition spaces for art owned by Prussia’s kings, and after 1871, by the Kaisers of the German Empire. Aside from this one, the Island is home to the Neues (New) Museum, the Altes (Old) Museum, and the Pergamonmuseum. The latter houses full-scale recreations of architectural elements from Middle Eastern antiquity, including the Ishtar Gate from Babylon. The seminal bust of Nefertiti, an ancient queen of Egypt, is in the Neues Museum.

The Bode Museum now displays sculpture. Originally it held Germany’s national painting Gallery, but after Communism fell and the city was re-united after 1989, the decision was made to move that collection to the new Gemaldegalerie in the Kulturforum (a district of cultural institutions – including the still-unconventional Orchestra Hall, the Philharmonie – south of the Tiergarten Park, created to replace arts venues destroyed in the war).

Or I should say, what remained of the national painting collection got moved. A void in today’s gathering of Old Master paintings (mostly German, Dutch, Flemish and Italian Renaissance) at the modern Gemaldegalerie is a wrenching reminder that violent struggle causes irreplaceable loss beyond human lives. Shortly before World War II, when it became apparent that aerial bombing was likely to be a part of any new military conflict (largely the fault of the Germans themselves, having prepared to greatly expand and enhance air warfare), major cities in the prospective combatant nations made plans to get their movable local treasures out of harm’s way.

Berlin did the same, evacuating much of the great art housed there to safer locations around the country. But there were many paintings in the Bode Museum (then still called by its original name, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum) too large or fragile to be moved. So when it was struck by Allied bombs dropped with the crude targeting mechanisms then available, a number of such monumental pieces were destroyed and lost forever; not just to Hitler’s Master Race, but to all of us. Presumably other treasuries on the Museum Island were also damaged in the bombing – as was the sumptuous Protestant Cathedral there – but I don’t know if their collections had already been removed.

(Something similar happened in the firebombing of Dresden; much of the music of Schuetz, a marvelous late Renaissance German composer which had never been copied, was incinerated and simply gone, depriving us all of whatever joy and delight it might have afforded.)

Today, the Gemaldegalerie, while rich in the modest-sized paintings that could be removed and thus preserved, is notably lacking in larger works. Their absence is a visual echo of how barbarism can tear at the fragile fabric of civilization. Part of Art’s purpose and mission is to moderate human behavior, but it cannot withstand fully unleashed passion; a burst of animal savagery can cause the work of the Ages to be undone.

And at this museum, in Hitler’s Berlin, it did.

CONTEXT: The next four posts are from my 2016 visit to Berlin. My friend Paul was with me, so he is the other part of any reference to ‘we’ in these.

I have already put several Berlin posts from that trip on this blog, but chose these to illustrate the whipsaw of history still visible, or manifest, in the city. That is, how the primitive priorities and bestial deeds of the Nazis came to appear, and to remain, amid the great achievements of previous, and 21^st Century, German culture. They will show more about Berlin’s heritage as a place of civilization, but also lurking results of Hitler turning it into a stronghold of the unspeakable.

Realizing that such extremities can arise and abide within the same setting and society, may provide a tragic but worthwhile lesson about the breadth – for good and ill – of human capacities.

We were strolling aimlessly when we confronted this menacing apparition on Reinhardtstrasse. This was a platform for anti-aircraft guns (“flak”) to protect Berlin from Allied bombing during the war. It squatted there surrounded by ordinary new buildings; intricate construction to facilitate destruction.

It had the thickest cement walls I’ve ever seen, to resist direct bomb hits, an immovable relic of catastrophic violence like a facial wound that cannot be removed or fully hidden. Massive as this was, it was a lesser fortification; far larger such bastions were built in the Berlin area, some so immense that demolishing them might wreck precious infrastructure nearby. Those have just been allowed to deteriorate gradually, overgrowing with vegetation.

Thus this fearsome bulwark has been left in place, now housing creative-oriented businesses. Its solidity was hard to adapt, so office space got wedged into its existing voids brightened from their military austerity, with cosmetic exterior touches to soften its Bastille-like facade.

Even if one didn’t know its original purpose, there was no mistaking the grim demeanor of this sinister beast, making the harsh realities of war in every sense ‘concrete.’ It is a disfigurement of a city at peace – over which it still casts shadows – that made me shudder. Suggesting a vast dragon’s molar, it is a fittingly brutish image to reflect a regime that conceived and carried out a host of horrors of which the Holocaust was worst, if far from the only one.

The Nazis stole massively from their conquered territories; for example, nearly all concrete produced in occupied France was appropriated by the Germans for their own use, possibly including this tower. But like many Nazi policies, plundering defeated lands contributed to their own undoing, because starving subject national economies (and civilian populations) of resources and food for consumption in the Reich eventually weakened them too much to help the Nazi war effort. To say nothing of how the implacable rage that Germans exalting themselves as a ‘Master Race’ united overwhelming forces against them, including those starving civilian populations, avid for liberation and retribution.

Malevolence Hitler brewed in Berlin spread from the Pyrenees to the Volga like a great, swelling bladder of villainy till it burst, inevitably, on thorns that grew from the violence he had set loose on Earth.  The feral aggression and depraved cruelty of Nazi Germany necessitated things like this tower to defend its own cities against counterstrikes by mighty foes it had provoked.

This bleak hulk failed in its original task of repelling the global onslaught a belligerent mindset had aroused, and now – exquisite irony – shelters creative activity instead. It is both a totem of war’s wastefulness, and an inadvertent, dire warning of what can happen if human reason is perverted to serve faith in brute force.

Quite a lesson there. Though sadly not all have learned it, as Russian ‘faith in brute force’ against Ukraine (as of June, 2023) shows. The fate of the Third Reich surely supports the premise that those who live by the sword are liable to perish by it. And rightly so; aside from all the harm they inflict, nothing less than the gradual improvement of human Nature itself may depend on such men, and such mindsets, not being allowed to prevail.

Another image of Prague, almost the opposite in scale and spirit of my panorama of its splendor from the Charles Bridge. In some ways, this intimate view seemed more typical of how the city’s atmosphere felt overall, in that it evokes what authentic, stable civilization looks, and feels, like.

This is not apparently a famous street, but set on a gentle slope with solid, quietly elegant buildings, it utterly charmed me. In most cities, such calm and unpretentious grace might make it extraordinary – even magical. Yet it seemed to be an area of casually dressed locals, and so may be just an ‘ordinary’ street in central Prague.

I have elementary knowledge of the city’s history, geography, etc., but it is not necessary to know much background about a place to sense when one is seeing something quite special there. This vista felt like a sort of mellow mist, yet also crystallized the essence of ‘authentic, stable, civilization.’

The young woman walking towards me here had a slight smile. I have wondered if she was a resident of the area, mildly pleased to see another tourist register her enchanting daily environs. I do not know, as we did not speak (I would not presume she knew English), but that was the impression her smile gave.

This modest street looked like an ambience to be embraced, not just ‘consumed,’ per the cultural reflex of the 21^st Century. Civilization not as dismissal of the old, and frantic pursuit of novelty and progress, but as continuous and cumulative, rather than discrete and episodic. Of recognizing how the past may be imbued with experience that is now, and will remain, worth appreciating. And savoring.

This is a classic view of Prague, showing some of its main monuments; for example, the spires of St. Vitus cathedral, standing proud above the red roofs of Hradcany Castle, are visible here. The gloomy skies notwithstanding, seeing this was a really singular experience; a panorama of characteristic Old World grandeur.

I took this picture from one of the city’s most beloved sights, its Medieval Charles Bridge (‘Karlov Most’) over the Vltava river, renowned for the sculptures that line it. Those had no unified theme, were clearly installed at different times in honor of different types of subjects, and given such prominent locations that many were probably major artworks in their own right. Most of the statues here are copies, the originals having been moved inside various venues to shield them from the elements.

Besides helping to discourage invaders, gates like those at each end of this bridge often had functions such as collecting tolls to pay for maintenance, or import taxes on transiting goods. Also, because bridges long enough to cross wide rivers were rare till the modern era, they often became focuses to spread information. For example, traitors’ heads were spiked on Old London Bridge as warnings; Venice’s Ponte Rialto was a prime place to hear news.

But Prague came close to having not survived to enchant us today. Heartbreaking as it was for the Czechs to yield their Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 (after France and Britain warned them at the Munich Conference to do so, or fight the Third Reich alone), posterity should be grateful they submitted. Goering, head of the Nazi air force, had already threatened to bomb the city to dust – with regret, acknowledging it was a ‘lovely place’ – if the Czechs resisted this territorial theft.  

All you see here might then have been destroyed, and lost. (As Paris might have been, had it become a battleground in 1940.)     

We should also be glad Prague did not slash many wide, new streets through its venerable fabric for the sake of traffic efficiency (Paris and London did). A few such were added, but most of the central city still has an aura from less rational/regimented eras; small, labyrinthine byways. It is not the easiest urban geography to traverse or to learn, but there are plenty of towns that prioritize the needs of the car, and ease of navigation. Prague is rare both in scale and quality of ambience retained, for not having done the same.

In addition to surviving World War 2 mostly intact, the city’s historic center was largely left alone by the Communists who ruled Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989, which puts it in a small subset of places that history felicitously bypassed until their unfashionable, half-shabby prospect – by then rare – began to be admired.  Prague, the national capital with some 1.3 million people in its region, is probably large enough to support skyscrapers, but none were visible. That suggests a deliberate decision after Democracy returned not to replace distinguished, elegant buildings in this core with new structures out of scale and harmony with such refined surroundings.

Czechoslovakia emerged from Nazi occupation, then Communist constraint in a subdued upheaval: The Velvet Revolution of 1989. After that, Prague, previously a treasure largely inaccessible behind the Iron Curtain, got rediscovered, to the delight of the world.  And its charm – perhaps the word that best describes it – has been largely, and wisely, cherished and preserved since.

Water-fronting streetscapes like these had a certain sober charm which – since they have not been replaced en masse in the name of ‘progress’ – presumably reflects something of the Netherland’s national character. Though both Amsterdam and Venice are water-oriented, this Dutch town looked immeasurably tidier and more efficient than its Italian analogue (which I also visited for the first time on that 2016 European excursion). Unlike Venice’s seemingly random pattern of jagged canals and short, narrow streets unsuitable for motorized traffic, central Amsterdam has a carefully planned concentric layout.

And the desire for order of the city’s Golden Age proto-merchant culture is also suggested by the still-prevalent building stock visible here: Hundreds of narrow, 4 to 6 story-high residential structures, presumably built or owned largely out of profits from Dutch international trade or its domestic support enterprises. These structures appeared to be substantial but unpretentious, and evidently the fruit of careful investment. In contrast, older residential buildings in Venice did not give that impression.

That difference also represents a seismic shift in social priorities. Whereas most of Venice’s notable buildings seemed to be governmental, the palazzi of local nobility or religious properties, the multi-story blocks in which ordinary Venetians apparently lived along narrow pedestrian streets, in the era of the city’s zenith (several centuries before Amsterdam’s prominence) looked to be fairly non-descript, utilitarian – even a bit shabby, vertical hovels – shelter for the urban masses.

By contrast, the housing stock of Amsterdam presented solidity and order, not just crude abodes expeditiously thrown up. Looking at those rows of sturdy townhouses, one can perceive harbingers of a wealth-spreading, business-oriented society – not just a sprinkle of scattered elegance, based on restricted control of resources amid semi-squalor, typical of pre-Modern urbanism – that would continue to evolve, and help drive an interconnected world economy as it grew and prospered.

For example, the canal-side roadways visible here were likely originally built to facilitate moving commercial goods from water craft to markets in town, or beyond. Later they were adaptable to use for auto traffic and parking, whereas Venice’s haphazard layout precluded such re-purposing. Today, Amsterdam is still a locus of progress and evolution in civilization and economics, whereas Venice – a town tied to the Mediterranean as the world’s center of gravity, so then bypassed by oceanic exploration – has proven, physically and spiritually, far less ‘adaptable’ to change. Venice now mainly survives as a tourist destination, offering visitors evidence of its past glories. Reflect on that comparison, if/as you may.

The Dutch Republic was not democratic as Americans in the 21st Century might think of that word, but unlike almost all the rest of Europe, it was no longer wholly class-bound, either (as Venice, though also nominally a Republic, remained). Netherlanders then had less a “station” in life than a “standing,” which one could improve by personal determination and exertion; efforts that the ‘proto-merchant culture’ encouraged, and rewarded.

CONTEXT: I am currently nurturing some large writing projects, including an ambitious one for this blog. But rather than cease posting here till that is ready, I am going to re-post a few more items from my 2016 trip to Europe, starting with this one from Amsterdam. These will be relatively short, dealing mostly with substantial, not largely abstract themes. They are chosen in hopes they may provide context about places or events that inquisitive people might savor.

‘Exotic’ is a relative, subjective term. I live in Chicago, which seems comfortably familiar to me, but to someone from London, Moscow, Tokyo, Lima, Lagos, etc., my hometown may well seem ‘exotic’ – just as theirs would to me. For example, I was delighted when a group of visiting Parisians once told me they found Chicago – with its parapet of Skyscrapers and much of the best modern architecture anywhere sitting on the shore of glittering, opalescent Lake Michigan – ‘spectaculaire.’ They knew of nowhere in Europe where such stupendous works of Man abut such an auspicious natural setting.

I am very fond of my city and while I never considered it prosaic, it was a revelation to hear the impression it can make on people seeing it for the first time. So please consider: Might that also be true of wherever you live? Could there be things there you take for granted that would delight, even amaze, a newcomer? Paris’ inhabitants have appeared to me to be almost indifferent to their surroundings, even though those include some of the most elegant streets and structures in the world.

So while familiarity may breed indifference, never forget that our Earth is full of wonders and marvels, human and natural – or maybe denying easy categorization. Not all of them are ‘show-stoppers’ like Chicago’s rampart of cloudbusters, but many of them may be ‘breath takers’ anyway. And some of them may be in your life every day. So be attentive to the possibility of ‘wonders and marvels’ around you.

To start this interim series, something very cute from a museum in Amsterdam. By the way; ‘Brazilie’ is the Dutch name for ‘Brazil,’ where they once had colonies.

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in addition to artworks at the level of Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch,’ was full of varied, whimsical items gathered globally, to remind the Dutch of the giant shadow their little land cast in its era of outsized, multifaceted achievement in the late 17th – early 18th centuries, when their ancestors sailed forth to explore, and exploit, vast reaches of the world. Its collection echoes a culture of openness to outside influence, upon which their culture apparently continues to evolve. This stuffed toy looked like an anteater, though I’m not sure (the Museum was closing as I dashed through its store, where this was displayed; no time to investigate). Such things don’t usually attract me, but now I wish I had bought this. It was a real novelty, and as you may agree, very cute.

Today’s Dutch people are reputed to be irreverent, resistant to pomposity and rote convention; very different from the severe character of their thrifty, Bible-guided forebears in their Golden Age – and possibly a logical development of their society’s drift away from rigid, approved behavioral codes. This is also reflected in their moral flexibility and live-and-let-live attitudes, demonstrated by the adult pleasures on show in Amsterdam.

It is also reflected in their attitude towards the Rijksmuseum itself. Although it contains some of the greatest creative treasures in the world, it did not seem like some set-apart temple of high culture, revered as a semi-sacred space and treated with hushed decorum. Instead, the Rijks felt more like an active part of contemporary Dutch identity. In fact, it is literally implanted in the everyday experience of Amsterdam, because a heavily used bike lane runs at street level between its wings. Such a synergy may say as much about the Netherlands of today as the displays inside the museum say about its Golden past.

It seems good the Rijks is part of dynamic communal life rather than an inviolate temple to be venerated at a worshipful remove. Great art requires concentration to create, or fully appreciate; but not necessarily humble reverence, for its energy to spread and affect a broader community. And that is surely true for sensations from the natural world around us, too.