HEIDELBERG--Suddenly stricken by a bronchial virus,
I took to my hotel bed for two hours in the afternoon, regrettably missing a
guided tour of the
baroque old town, which is dominated by the ruins of Heidelberg
Castle on steep wooded slopes high above the River Neckar. The
castle, a popular tourist attraction surrounded by a park, is a mix of styles
from Gothic to Renaissance. An old stone bridge (erected
1786-88) and medieval bridge gate were originally part of the town wall.
Located in south-west Germany
in the Rhine Rift Valley, Heidelberg (pop.145,000) occupies
mainly the left river bank and is bordered by mountains. It’s among the warmest
regions of Germany, with plants atypical of central
Europe,
including almond
and fig
trees. It’s an historic city, as well. The University of
Heidelberg played a leading part in the era of humanism and reformation in the
15th and 16th centuries. Heidelberg's library, founded in 1421, is the oldest
public library in Germany still intact.
From 1933–1945, Heidelberg was a
stronghold of the Nazi regime. Non-Aryan university staff were discriminated
against. By 1939, one-third had been forced out for racial and political
reasons. During Kristallnacht (9 November
1938), Nazis burned down two synagogues and started systematically deporting
Jews; 150 were sent to Dachau concentration camp, and thousands
of others followed.
On 30 March 1945, the civilian
population surrendered to the U.S. Army without resistance. Historians believe
Heidelberg escaped bombing in WWII because it was neither an industrial center
nor a transport hub, and America wanted to use the city as a garrison after the
war (we’ve had a military base here since 1951).
On our
second day here, I’d recovered sufficiently to take part in a trip to the
Black Forest, a wooded mountain
range in southwestern Germany bordered by the Rhine valley. It was a long drive, made longer by
traffic congestion and fog that hid the high peaks and scenic hills. It was so named by the Romans because
its dense growth of conifers blocked out most of the light inside the forest. Today, the Black Forest mostly consists
of pines
and firs,
some of which are grown commercially. Due to mass logging and land use changes,
it’s only a fraction of its original size. And in 1999, a cyclone downed trees
on hundreds of acres of mountaintops, leaving some bare.
On a happier note, we had a fabulous lunch at an inn that included the famous Black Forest cake, which of course is made with
chocolate cake, cream, sour cherries, and Kirsch.
On the
way back to Heidelberg, I visited Kloster Alpirsbach, a Benedictine monastery magnificent
in its starkness. Now a protestant church, it nonetheless has a Catholic church
attached to it; a reminder of the days when if your prince changed his
religion, everyone did. Monks began brewing beer there in 1095. A yeasty aroma
in the air--and a sign on the brewery next door proclaiming theirs the “World’s
greatest beer”--indicated that the beer-making tradition remains.
In the evening,
we dined at a 350-year-old “romantik hotel” in the wine-growing region, where
the vineyards grow on nearly vertical mountain slopes and all work must be done
by hand because mechanized farm equipment can’t get up there.
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