Wanderer's Nightsong

Yes the nearest Bachstadt is Arnstadt, where JS Bach held his first appointment before moving onto Erfurt (the region´s capital) and then Leipzig, which is in Sachsen Anhalt (einen kleinen Paris as Goethe says in Faust I). He was born in Eisenach which is in the west of Thüringen. I haven´t been there. There´s a great statue of Bach in Arnstadt, the nearest small town to Ilmenau. I cycled there one Sunday, got lost on the lanes dappled with sunlight and the scent of pine. There were many Hell´s Angels on the roads, one big guy wearing a Wehrmacht style German helmet, which looks like a knob, and a pair of glasses with throat cover, which made him look like Darth Vader. They moved on fairly quickly after pointing at my alu bike and laughing at it. I got a hopper ticket and went down south after having lunch in Arnstadt (a great lunch of Thüringen Spargel - asparagus - soup, bockwurst mit sauerkraut und brötchen and a great ice cream all washed down with a great glass of Köstritzer, the local brew. I cycled for about 30 km into Suhl, a town totally nondescrit, housing mostly old people (I think it is Thüringen´s old people´s home.). Then I got back on the train, thankfully my alu bike was mostly still in one piece, although I almost came a cropper on several occasions, and went back to Plaue, an orifice of nothingness between Ilmenau and Arnstadt.

So I didn´t find out very much about JS Bach, except to say that Arnstadt looks like the nest of a great genius. I don´t know but Thüringen must have been amazing in Bach´s day, its certainly an amazing Länder today, although is is a but too ruhig. Schiller was Professor of History in Jena, I´ve been through Jena on several occasions now. It has a big university with an active, radical student fringe. Erfurt looks like a painting, there´s the Krämer Brücke, the only example of a Medieval bridge in northern europe that has shops on it, like the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in Firenze. There´s a statue of Martin Luther, who preached in the town, and also was kidnapped/imprisoned/in hiding in the Wartburg where he assumed the identity Junker Jörg (the local aristrocrats realised that Luther was going to change Europe, but they needed a way of placing him within their narrative, so they awarded him this imaginary appelation, Lord George. ML wore a strange beard in the Wartburg and was generally pretty mad most of the time, a really crazy, whacky character, the Michael Jackson of his day).

Another fascinating paragraph. No, I didn’t know about another generation of Argentine exiles. Where did you glean all this from? And, of course, just happens you’re in Germany again, as you are. I knew nothing about Thüringen and uranium. I used to associate it with Bach.


In gainful directive employment so must be swift about answering –

Cheers,
Simon


Hi, I had to take the bike down to the repair shop. Its a hot day here, about 30 degrees. The repair shop is just out of the town centre, near an area called Ober Pörlitz. The town itself consists of old apartment blocks from the GDR era and older buildings which are beautiful and clearly originated in the 19th century. The apartment blocks are very ugly indeed, but there would certainly be some of them even if the GDR had never happened. Ilmenau was a spa town going back to the 18th century. The town is proud to be a Goethestadt, the poet visited the town frequently towards the end of his life, since he was taxman for the entire region. He lived in Weimar beside F von Schiller but holidayed in Ilmenau writing his famous poem Wandlers Nachtlied (Wanderer´s Night Song) on the tallest mountain called the Kickelhahn (cockerel). Goethe also supervised mining in the region, for the geology of Thüringen is very rich and complex. For instance, 50,000 people were employed in the uranium industry, but all lost their jobs when the GDR collapsed (do you know Hönecker is still alive, living in Argentina?). Thüringen satisfied the uranium needs for the whole of the GDR and Thüringen is one of the best preserved, cleanest, wealthiest parts of the old GDR along with Sachsen whose capital is Dresden. There´s also an extensive glass industry, the thermometer was invented here and a Technical University. I am staying in the Christlichesjugenddorf on campus. Apparantly the inventor of the MP3 lectures at the TU.
 
Wanderer's Nightsong II

The hut where Goethe wrote the poem

Up there all summits
are still.
In all the tree-tops
you will
feel but the dew.
The birds in the forest stopped talking.
Soon, done with walking,
you shall rest, too.

Ein Gleiches (German)

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.