An impressionistic tour of Germany and Austria

 

First of a two-part series

By Ira Spector

SAN DIEGO — The white scrubbed guy with the perfect part in his hair standing in the back of the plane wore a buttoned seersucker jacket without a wrinkle. His shirt collar button was fastened snug against his neck and held there by a hand-made bow tie. I was positive that his undershorts also had ironed creases. He had been en-route for twelve hours from Pasadena wearing those clothes, and in another two hours when we landed in Amsterdam, he was immediately boarding a plane for an additional eight-hour journey to Nairobi and some bureaucratic job. I was sure he would deplane at the end of his journey in the same outfit, impeccable and unwrinkled. I was wearing sweat pants that itched my crotch. Amsterdam was far enough for the clothes I was wearing.

My wife Carole and I picked up a rented car and drove six uneventful hours to our friends Joe (Joechim) and Herlinda Appel’s home located in Aumuhle, an elegant, wooded, suburban town, near Hamburg, Germany.

Previously the Appels had lived in our community, where, at the nearby General Atomic company, Joe was a research physicist. Herlinda, a mathematician, helped Joe in his calculations amid changing diapers and packing lunches for their four kids. We all belonged to the same tennis club, which cemented our relationship. In the summer we went to the Del Mar beach every Saturday and Sunday, sitting in front of Jimmy Durante and Desi Arnaz’s homes. Joe and I routinely took our “dirty old man walks” ogling the girls while discussing politics and superconductivity, which was Joe’s area of interest and expertise in physics.

In 1972 they moved back to Germany, where Joe took a position teaching at the University of Hamburg, eventually becoming chairman of his department.

The Appels’ home adjoins the privately owned 1400-acre forest of the Bismarck family. In 1872, A grateful Kaiser Wilhem I gave the forest to Chancellor Bismarck as a reward for uniting Germany in the thirty-years war. The forest is a marvelous dense wild wood of Pine, Cedar, Chestnut, Oak, and Birch trees, with delightful paths padded with fallen leaves. Every twist and bend in the trail brings a new surprise and gift from nature. Joe and I enjoyed two days of long walks and talks and hunting for “special” mushrooms beneath damp ferns and wild grass. He loved the mushrooms that Herlinda detested.

In Berlin, Carole and I stayed at a small clean hotel adjacent to the American Embassy. A short time before, because of the recent African bombings, we had been told in the media that the U.S. was heightening the security of our embassies all over the world The embassy complex in Berlin is huge. It encompasses an entire city block, and is completely walled. The main building sits precariously close to the street with a wide row of stairs leading down to the street. An ornamental iron rail gate seals off the entrance. We expected to see several Marines posted out-front with automatic-machine guns behind sandbags as we had seen other countries do to protect buildings and personnel. Instead, what we we saw was shockingly different, almost absurd. One bulging obese German private security guard with a pistol on his hip, guarded the entire block by himself. No guards were in evidence on the side streets. Parking was allowed everywhere. Cars and trucks were parked there day and night. So much for security!

We took a walking tour where the old East Berlin wall had been, and saw “no man’s land” where people where shot trying to escape from the “peoples paradise,” and visited the “Checkpoint Charlie Museum,” which displayed the ingenious methods desperate people used to escape, risking certain death or long imprisonment if they were caught.

Our guide book indicated the location of Hitler’s underground Chancellery on our walk. The place where he died has no marker anywhere. There are no markers anywhere in the world memorializing Hitler’s existence. The location shown on our map was Potsdamer Platz, where an entire city within the city of Berlin was under construction. We counted twenty-five giant cranes in this ten square block area. I could only approximate where the Chancellery was, and so a symbolic spit was the best I could do to memorialize “Der Fuhrer.”

From Berlin we drove south to the Spreewald. An area between Berlin and Dresden that is a large system of charming canals where people have lived for hundreds of years. They earn their living either pole pushing boatloads of tourists through the serene waters, regaling them (in German) about the history of the canals, or selling locally made pickles, a specialty of the area. (They just tasted like pickles to me.)

That evening we spent in a company town outside of Dresden owned by BASF, the music tape manufacturer. They had a huge plant, and owned many large apartment houses nearby for employees which were all empty. We had our own well furnished apartment in one of these buildings for thirty dollars. I met a Forester who spoke perfect English, and asked him why the huge housing complex was empty? He said, “ This was typical of Eastern Germany. Many workers were migrating to the West for better paying jobs.” East German workers still received 20% less wages than their western compatriots.

Dresden, our next stop, was fire bombed to ashes by the allies in World War II. Here, 50,000 to 300,000 people were incinerated in two consecutive nights of incendiary horror. The city has since been completely rebuilt. The most outstanding tourist attraction is a complex of three baroque buildings, built by a king named “Augustus the Strong.” He was reputed to be not only a physical giant, but also the king of all studs.

The buildings were constructed of grimly darkened sandstone that spoke of centuries of grime and pollution. Confused I asked our guide, “Had these buildings had somehow survived the bombing?” “No” I was told, the sandstone is from the local area, and contains Manganese that is unstable in air. After a few short years in the atmosphere, oxidation takes place and turns the stone black and ancient looking.

Continuing on our drive, I turned apprehensive as we headed toward the city of Weimar, and the dreaded concentration camp of Buchenwald. As we got closer I became suspicious of people I saw who were in their seventies or older. Those bastards knew of the daily horrors and bestiality that occurred there. In my mind they were as guilty as the animal guards inside the camp. The morning started out gray and grim, which matched my mood. The sky turned blue an hour before we arrived at that awful place. I was disappointed. There should always be a gloomy sky over that hell hole of horrors to define its existence. The surrounding countryside leading into the camp was too beautiful, forested and serene. This place should be only rocks and dirt for miles around. A permanent Mt. St. Helen’s style scar.

The woman in the information center gave me directions like I was visiting a national park in the U.S “The museum location is just past the crematorium,” she said in an even, dispassionate voice. This to indicate a place where thousands of innocent men, women and children were murdered in horrible ways and then incinerated like garbage. A few groups of middle-school aged and older children passed us as we were entering. Their behavior was like any kids of any age, jiggling and pounding each other in the ritual dance of the young. Later I saw prison pictures of children in the museum who would never ever experience that innocent behavior. The fearful look on their faces, was the same as the desperate adults, a permanent screaming panic in their enslaved eyes. Pictures of arrested men in the U.S. still show defiance and arrogance in their faces. These faces had none of that look. Just fear.

My tears came spontaneously and hard when Carole found and brought me to the area where the Jewish Memorial was. It sat besides the foundation remains of one of the barracks buildings, which housed the prisoners. Individual cast concrete letters in Yiddish and English were set in the dirt and rocks. On one of the barracks foundation’s I added a small rock, the traditional symbol of Jewish remembrance of the dead, to the hundreds that were already there from previous mourners. I’m not a religious Jew, far from it, but I uttered the first line of the Kaddish the Jewish prayer for the dead which is all I knew.

At the wrought iron entrance gate the condemned passed through are the words (interpreted) which say To Each his Own. In context a meaningless statement, created by meaningless people, in a meaningless place.

No one was gassed at Buchenwald. That occurred in Dachau,Treblinka, and Auschwitz. The bastards here shot or hanged the condemned, and then living prisoners carted them in metal lined wooden carts to the ovens. First the corpses were laid on a white tile table that sloped to a drain hole, and then the gold was yanked from their mouths. All this evidence we saw with our own eyes. “Come here you skinhead bastards, Iranian fanatics, and see for yourselves!” There was a guest comment book near the exit. I wrote the following: “This could happen again in any place where ignorance and poverty combine to infect the minds of desperate people, and enable vile evil men to emerge as leaders, promising a way out of their misery and misfortune by blaming others. BEWARE.”

It was after two in the afternoon when we left the camp. We were unable to eat in the camp cafeteria, or in the city of Weimar eight kilometers distant. We needed to get as far away as possible to get the stench from our nose and throats. Carole, raised in the bosom of the Methodist church remarked, “How can anyone believe in God after seeing this place!”

We headed southwest into the center of Germany, and then due south down the “Romantic Strasse, and past a series of towns and small villages dripping with medieval and Bavarian folk art charm. Each evening about five we looked for small signs that read “Zimmer Frei” (bed and breakfast). Because it was off-season, we rarely were turned away. The rooms were always immaculate, always had heavy thick puffs to crawl under in lieu of blankets, and always included a giant breakfast of orange juice, cold cuts, cheeses, Brot and Brochen (fresh bread or rolls), occasionally cereal and yogurt and always good American style coffee. At one stop our hosts made their own wine and apple brandy from their orchards which we relished.

Continuing south we headed for the town of Dachau, and its hell-hole concentration camp. I was surprised the town did not change its name, considering its shameful past. It was difficult to find the directional signs to the camp. The few that existed were in very small almost unreadable gothic letters and the directional arrows narrower than any I had ever seen. I got the impression that the town would like everyone to forget that the concentration camp ever existed, and the 250,000 or so human beings who went up in smoke there.

Dachau is a bustling prosperous suburban town a short few kilometers from Munich. The commuter rail line passing through the town runs on the same track that emptied its human cattle onto the ground and led them within walking distance to the slaughterhouse. The concentration camp is in the center of the town. A large number of people in their twenties were at the camp when we were. The mood of the young visitors seemed more of curiosity. The older people like Carole and myself were more grim and emotional. The first stop was the museum. It was large and quite crowded. However I didn’t think it was as poignant as the Buchenwald Museum, which had significantly more artifacts. Buchenwald displayed the forbidden heart-wrenching art works of the prisoners, both children and adults, reflecting their circumstances.

I got quite angry at Dachau. The barracks where the prisoners were housed has long been torn down, but the foundations remain in orderly rows fifty or sixty rows bisected by a wide center path. At the end of that path which is the focal point of the camp, an enormously tall Catholic memorial stood. I found it obscene. Immediately behind the grounds, outside the walls of the camp is a Carmelite Catholic Monastery. The Jewish memorial which is off to the right about 100 meters, and not so tall, is far more emotionally poignant, and reflects the horrors that occurred there. The building is constructed in black rough-hewn stone flanked by tortured metal gates. Inside the tall structure, an open hole in the ceiling lets in sunlight and shines down on a Jewish star inlaid in white stone in the center of the floor The light from the sky touches the star. To me this monument tells the story of Dachau, no words could utter.

Obersalzburg and Hitler’s Eagle Nest aerie retreat: The setting is incredibly beautiful. Spectacular exposed upturned striated rock mountaintops peeking above the dense forests beneath. The only access to Eagle’s nest is by a tourist bus that winds four and half-steep miles up the side of the single lane road.

Entry to the top is through a long arched tunnel into the mountain ending in a domed rotunda. A very large magnificent brass elevator swallows our busload and carried us four hundred feet to the top. I asked the elevator operator if the brass details and crystal chandelier were there during Hitler’s time. He told me it was original. I was overwhelmed by the sense of historical atmosphere. Twenty to thirty murderers at one time were accommodated in this luxurious space.

At the top, nothing is left as a memory of Hitler. His residence building was torn down, and a restaurant built in its place. We walked through the restaurant, and climbed an outcrop of rocks at a higher level, and even more views. It was a lovely day, the sky blue and the sun warm. I could see forever. As much as I hate the memory of Hitler and the appeasement of Britain’s naive Prime Minister Chamberlin here, I put that thought aside, and took in the majesty owned by nature alone.

Berchtesgaden is cute, kitsch and touristy. Salzburg, Austria, few short kilometers away is dripping in history. We viewed Mozart’s birthplace smack in the heart of the most touristy part of the city. A lovely crafts museum abuts a sheer cliff. Part of the interior wall of the museum is the cliff itself.

Neuschwanstein Castle is the much-photographed storybook castle high up on a tree covered mountain. It is one of three castles built by Mad King Ludwig, the second ruler of Austria/Hungary, with his family’s money. The castle took fourteen years to construct, and was never finished. Ludwig only occupied its lavishly decorated apartments for seven months before he was arrested, and sent to an asylum. Forty-eight hours later he was found drowned in a lake adjoining the property. The mysterious circumstances of his death have never been explained, as murder, suicide or accident.

Carole and I, along with ten other people, boarded a carriage drawn by a team of two strong horses that trotted up the mountain through dense woods with the cool dance of autumn coloring the leaves in shades of yellow and brown. A quite masculine but pretty, woman held rein over the team. Half way up the hill she jumped off the cart and walked alongside the panting horses and stopped the team, I thought she wanted to give them a rest, but it was for one beast who flung up his tail, let fly a few good tell tale sounds and projectiles, and a smell to tell his story. The horses then resumed their arduous task of hauling us higher up the hill. The amazon driver continued walking beside the cart. I guess she was getting her aerobics, or was feeling sorry for the horses and lightened their load. A short while later, the cart came to a halt again, and this time the other horse let fly. I do believe that if I had to haul that load up that hill, I would have crapped too!

We reached the landing where the cart could go no further. There was still an energetic ten-minute walk up an equally steep path to the top. My tennis legs and aerobic fitness made it easy for me. Carole with her arthritic hips and bad knee had a more difficult time. Some of the other assorted senior citizens in various age and health condition with us looked like they were climbing Mt. Everest.

At the top were many pipe divider rails to moo-crowds in organized fashion to the ticket booth. It was off-season and no lines, but the sign at the ticket booth mentioned waiting times more than an hour or more during the summer tourist season.

Inside the castle, we were guided through fancifully decorated rooms. Ludwig, who never married, slept in a narrow single bed. His bedroom was completely adorned with carved wood details. A team of wood carvers worked in this room exclusively for four years.

The grandest chamber was the throne room. Floors in intricate mosaic patterns were interwoven with seashells, marble and gold leaf. Tall support columns painted in a faux indigo blue finish lent excitement to the room. A series of broad cream marble stair landings, led up to an elevated platform for a throne that never arrived.

Our guide told us the operatic composer Richard Wagner, a favorite of Ludwig, slept in one of the rooms we visited. She also showed us a room and piano on which he composed one of his operas. I was quite conflicted with this knowledge, because Wagner was known as a vitriolic anti-Semite. While I struggled with my feelings, I noticed a lean six-foot fellow in his forties, with closely cropped hair. His wife was a short, dumpy, out-of-shape woman, who struggled up every one of the numerous staircases we climbed. Amazingly he doted on her every panting breath. I noticed a tourist book in his hand written in Hebrew, and asked, “Are you from Israel?” “Yes, I am,” he answered, pleasantly surprised by my question. I then remarked of my feelings about Wagner and his association with the castle. His reply was classical Israeli. “Ah Wagner! I like his music. He is dead, and I am alive!” He solved my dilemma.

(Next: France)

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Ira Spector is an author and  freelance writer based in San Diego. This selection was republished from Spector’s 2011 work, Sammy Where Are You? .An Unconventional Memoir … Sort of.   It is available via Amazon.